Tony Perkins Washington Update
Published: 02-18-09
In a November 2007 with ACORN leaders candidate Obama said Ive been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. It took President Obama just 29 days to elevate that partnership beyond fighting to funding. After promising to ban special interests from his recovery plan the new administration just handed his partys keys--and $2 billion of your tax dollars--to groups like ACORN the liberals get-out-the-vote powerhouses.
The move is one of many political payoffs in the liberal swag bag known as the stimulus bill. Unfortunately for conservatives it will go a long way toward creating the permanent liberal majority in Congress.
Unlike the old days when ACORN had to go through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for its share of the federal pie the stimulus bypasses the middleman and wires the money directly to the group--without the typical lobbying restrictions it might experience under HUD.
To an unsuspecting American these Neighborhood Stabilization Programs sound like perfectly legitimate ways to jumpstart the economy. To those of us who have watched entities like ACORN its an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars.
Now that Obama has squeaked billions through Congress for his old buddies hes set his sights on the second half of his plan to establish a liberal supermajority--the census. As we reported last week the President made a big splash with his intent to move the Census Bureau directly under the White House and away from the supervision of the Commerce Department.
The idea has incited Republicans and Democrats who disagree with the idea of politicizing the census. As the liberal San Francisco Chronicle points out The President will destroy the integrity of one of the U.S. governments most trusted institution... the census is more than a national nose count. Its used to divvy tax dollars for roads and hospitals spot population trends for schools... social programs and--did we forget?--play high-stakes politics.
Under Obama and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel the census would become a weapon to redistrict America in the liberals favor. As FRCs Ken Blackwell warns in an op-ed today it would upset the balance of political power and jeopardize representative democracy as we know it.
As former co-chairman of the U.S. Census Monitoring Board Ken is uniquely qualified to talk about the implications of the move. If youd like to read more from an insiders perspective please log on to
www.frc.org and read Kens A Chicago-Style Census.
