Mr. Speaker, recently this body moved to cut off all funding, all Federal funding, from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.
By now we have all seen reports of several recent videos revealing ACORN employees coaching two young individuals on how to obtain government-subsidized housing to set up an underground prostitution house with underage girls brought into this country illegally.
But this is only the beginning of ACORN's criminal activities, Mr. Speaker. ACORN is under investigation in at least 14 States for voter registration fraud. And ACORN workers have consistently employed criminal tactics, including establishing an illegal quota system and illegally compensating canvassers. ACORN has repeatedly reported false information to the IRS and to the Department of Labor. And to cap it off, Mr. Speaker, ACORN and its affiliates have received more than $53 million in Federal funds from 1994 to 2008 and were eligible for up to $8.5 billion more from the economic stimulus bill and the 2010 Federal budget.
Mr. Speaker, I believe one of the most overlooked and astounding trophies in ACORN's criminal hall of fame is its role in fighting for policies that led to the mortgage crisis and ultimately catalyzed our current economic recession. ACORN fought vigorously for regulatory reform of the Community Reinvestment Act, a 1977 bill that drastically weakened mortgage lending standards. The result of the new regulations ACORN lobbied for was that banks were no longer rated because they made good loans or their standard of equitable lending, but rather, they were rated based on the number of loans they made, regardless of the ability of the borrower to pay back the loan or to qualify for a loan in the first place.
Banks were hit with large fines if they refused to dole out these toxic loans, the majority of which they knew would not be repaid. And if they still dared resist the government's mandate, ACORN would publicly picket them or threaten to hit these banks with lawsuits to force them to comply.
Mr. Speaker, although the mainstream media has been largely silent on the ties between ACORN and President Obama, it was actually during this time in the early part of President Obama's career when he was working with ACORN that President Obama was part of the lawsuit to force Citibank to abandon its time-tested lending standards and disperse millions and millions of dollars in high-risk loans. Now this isn't speculation, Mr. Speaker. His name is listed on the records of the lawsuit. President Obama played a significant role in helping to shape the mortgage debacle that caused America's recent and ongoing economic crisis.
The result of the lawsuits like the one filed by Mr. Obama and ACORN has been that millions of dollars in toxic loans were made as a result of ACORN and its subsidiaries using the CRA regulations to bludgeon America's financial institutions into making loans they never should have and otherwise never would have made. As we all know now, those toxic loans were packaged and resold on Wall Street, and the entire system began to crumble.
If those original loans, Mr. Speaker, that were sold to Wall Street had been made under the traditional, financially sound practices based on income, down payments and credit histories, rather than the politically correct and financially fatal criteria that Barack Obama sued to achieve, the entire financial meltdown might have been avoided.
But how many Americans know that, Mr. Speaker? How many Americans are aware of the role that ACORN and one of their lawyers and close allies by the name of Barack Obama played in creating the housing and financial crisis?
Mr. Speaker, the ironic reality now is that President Barack Obama is put in the schizophrenic position of signing a bill to defund the very organization that helped to launch his career and ultimately helped get him elected. And the silence from the Obama administration on the ACORN issue has been unbelievable, Mr. Speaker.
The Obama administration and liberal Democrats in Congress now have a choice. They can take a sincere stand against corruption by launching investigations into ACORN and work with Republicans to pass the Defund ACORN Act to stop all Federal funding for ACORN, or they can throw their supposed commitment to transparency and accountability out the window for good.
Mr. Speaker, let us hope that they will choose to stand against allowing ACORN or any other corrupt organization to receive one more dime of taxpayer dollars now or ever again.