Department Of The Interior, Environment, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

Department Of The Interior, Environment, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010

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Mr. JOHANNS. Madam President, I compliment both Senators who just spoke, the Senator from California and the Senator from Tennessee. You underscore why we are so proud to live in this great country and the importance of these resources.

Also, as a former Secretary of Agriculture, I know the importance of adequate funding for firefighting. Without it, our forests are in serious jeopardy. I wanted to express that.

I rise today to talk about something that is enormously important. Three days ago, I was here on the Senate floor urging my colleagues to vote in favor of an amendment I offered to another appropriations bill, the Transportation and Housing Appropriations bill. The amendment had a very specific purpose. The purpose was to prohibit funds from going to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN.

I am very pleased to report that, in a true display of bipartisanship, 82 of my colleagues joined with me in voting in favor of protecting taxpayer dollars by voting for the amendment.

This was a significant and important vote in this body for a number of reasons. Such a strong bipartisan vote sent a very powerful message that the Senate is serious about eliminating the flow of taxpayer funds to an organization that can best be described as being in an absolute free fall when it comes to allegations of illegal activity--illegal activity that, in many respects, is funded with taxpayer dollars. Senators came to this floor a couple of days ago and they threw aside partisan loyalty in favor of prohibiting funds to an organization besieged by allegations of fraud and corruption and employee wrongdoing.

Bottom line: My colleagues--I am so proud of them--answered the call to defend taxpayers against waste, fraud, and abuse. But because of the limitations of that amendment, our job simply is not complete. Of course, in order to comply with the germaneness rules, we could only do so much with that amendment. Therefore, I come here again today to offer the same amendment to this bill.

The amendment to the T-HUD bill was a first step. The overwhelming vote on Monday stopped the flow of funds for transportation or housing funding that would otherwise go to ACORN.

At least in terms of Senate action, there is more process left there. Unfortunately, ACORN is still eligible to receive Federal dollars from innumerable sources in the Federal budget. That is why I am here today to offer the identical amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill and to call on my colleagues again to stand up for the American taxpayers.

There is unbelievable evidence that ACORN or its estimated 360-plus affiliates could be eligible for Department of Interior funding. The following words appear in the text of this bill 193 times: contracts, grants, nonprofits, and cooperative agreements.

There are so many ways ACORN can receive funds from the Interior bill. For example, ACORN's subsidiaries openly publicize their advocacy for environmental causes.

ACORN groups are heavily involved in community redevelopment, and so is the Department of the Interior. The links are obvious. They are undeniable.

In fact, on page 66 of the bill, you can--just to pull out specific language there included for the Great Lakes restoration project that would give money to nonprofits for ``planning, monitoring, and implementing.''

This is a project that President Obama has appointed a specific person to oversee. Do any of us have a certainty that ACORN won't receive any of that money? I certainly don't.

ACORN is able to tap into taxpayer moneys from so many other ways besides competitive grants. They or their web of affiliates are able to work out memoranda of understanding, cooperative agreements, and even subcontracts with the Federal Government.

Additionally, States that receive grants from the Federal Government can funnel money to ACORN affiliates, and there is very little oversight. My amendment will stop that. It will stop the money--the taxpayer dollars--being directed to this group.

The question before us today is whether my colleagues will again come to the floor and say this activity is wrong, it is damning. We need to stand and say that no money will go to a group engaged in this activity.

Last night, I was watching a news program, and yet another videotape surfaced of ACORN employee activity. It was shocking. This videotape displayed someone saying to an ACORN employee that they intended to bring underage minors into this country from other countries for the purpose of engaging in prostitution. There was active involvement by the ACORN employee in how this might happen, even to the extent of describing the contacts that this person had.

I want to say that we cannot relent, just because some taxpayer money was safeguarded, until a full government investigation is launched and completed, and if it turns out with no problem, so be it, but we cannot rest until that is done and we are assured and we can assure our citizens back home that no taxpayer money is being used in this organization.

It doesn't make sense to just stop with the Transportation and Housing Appropriations bill. We need to stand up and prohibit all sources of Federal funding and any possibility of Federal funding going to ACORN.

I will wrap up with a statement of deep respect for what my colleagues did on Monday. I believe it was the right thing to do. It was the right thing to step in here to the floor and cast a vote and say: Enough is enough, it stops here, it stops today.

We need to do everything we can to assure our taxpayers that there is no possibility somebody can access this funding from ACORN. My hope is we will come together as we did Monday and that we will do the right thing.

With that, I yield the floor.

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Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Madam President, I will respond to the Senator from Nebraska. My belief is that we had an amendment yesterday that was passed overwhelmingly by this body, prohibiting the use of Federal funds for ACORN, period. The staff has been researching this bill. We do not believe there are any Federal funds in this bill. I believe if there were a rollcall vote, it would come out essentially the same as it did yesterday.

So I say to the distinguished Senator, both the ranking member and I would be prepared to take this amendment by unanimous consent.

Mr. JOHANNS. Madam President, this is such an important issue. This is an issue that people all across the country are watching on the Senate floor. Therefore, I feel very strongly that if there were ever an opportunity for Senators to come to the floor and cast a vote in a rollcall fashion, this is one to make a very strong statement again about ACORN not receiving this funding.

I appreciate the offer of the Senator from California, but I must insist, because of the nature of what we are dealing with--the claims of alleged wrongdoing, the history of wrongdoing with employees from this organization, the videotapes, the potential to access the funding--that we need a rollcall vote on this issue.

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. If I may, through the Chair to the Senator, to the best of our knowledge, there is no funding in this bill for ACORN. The staff is looking and has found no funding in the bill for ACORN. Therefore, there is a redundancy, and this will have to be done on every single appropriations bill, which doesn't seem to me to make very good sense. I think an 80-plus vote yesterday is a very substantial vote. I think everybody who is interested has access to know--we are trying very hard--and I hope the Senator will not be upset by what I am saying, but we are trying to move our bill, and we will take the Senator's amendment so that the amendment--if there is any funding, it still cannot be used, even without this amendment. So the Senator is covered.

Mr. JOHANNS. Madam President, speaking to my colleague from California, let me say that I appreciate the Senator's offer of accepting this by unanimous consent. I appreciate the Senator's claim that she believes there is no way they can access funding. But I will tell you that I have operated a Federal Department myself--a very large department--where we administered millions and billions of dollars of grants and loans, et cetera. Once that appropriations bill is passed, the Senator knows and I know that unless there is some real trouble, we are free at the departmental level to pretty much administer the money. So there cannot be a guarantee that they won't get money out of this program.

The second thing I will offer here is this: This is not one of those issues that just comes along. This involves an organization that has had a history of very serious problems. I could not feel more strongly that the American people want us to come to the floor and cast a vote on this issue.

The final thing I want to say is this: I feel this is an important issue. There is a way to solve this problem so that I don't have to come down on every appropriations bill. We will be introducing a bill today--and we have reached out in a very bipartisan way to Democrats and Republicans, asking for people to join in this bill--that says simply that across the entire Federal Government no money for ACORN. My hope is we can pass that bill expeditiously and we can get that into effect.

I would like nothing more than to avoid having to come down here on each and every appropriations bill. Again, I appreciate the offer, but this is an important vote to constituents all across the United States. I think we owe it to them to show how we are going to vote on this issue.

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