In the wake of a scandal in which employees were caught on tape advising people posing as a prostitute and pimp in how to break the law, the House of Representatives voted today to strip ACORN of all federal funding.
The vote was 345-75 on a measured pushed by GOP House leader John Boehner. The Senate voted earlier this week to withdraw housing and urban development funding. But the House bill would remove all federal funding.
Perhaps in an effort to one-up Boehner, his colleague and sometime rival, House GOP Number 2 Eric Cantor called for a Justice Department investigation of the group.
We wrote about the scandal — and conservative effort to profit from it — here.
Late Update: Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) is arguing that that the bill is unconstitutional, because it singles out a specific entity for exclusion from participating in a federal program.
Here’s his press release:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, denounced a Republican Amendment adopted by the House of Representatives to deny all federal funds to ACORN as blatantly unconstitutional and a threat to unpopular organizations everywhere. The Republican initiative, entitled the Defund ACORN Act, singles out a specific organization by name for exclusion from participating in any federal program, in direct violation of the Constitution’s prohibition against Bills of Attainder.
