The Johanns Amendment # 2355 to H.R. 3288 passed by a margin of 83 to 7.
**UPDATE** View complete Senate vote here.
The seven “NAYs”:
| Burris (D-IL) Casey (D-PA) Durbin (D-IL) |
Gillibrand (D-NY) Leahy (D-VT) Sanders (I-VT) |
Whitehouse (D-RI) |
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From the Associated Press:
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Senate voted Monday to block the Housing and Urban Development Department from giving grants to ACORN, a community organization under fire in several voter-registration fraud cases.The 83-7 vote would deny housing and community grant funding to ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
The action came as the group is suffering from bad publicity after a duo of conservative activists posing as a prostitute and her pimp released hidden-camera videos in which ACORN employees in Baltimore gave advice on house-buying and how to account on tax forms for the woman’s income. Two other videos, aired frequently on media outlets such as the Fox News Channel, depict similar situations in ACORN offices in Brooklyn and Washington, D.C.
The Senate’s move would mean that ACORN would not be able to win HUD grants for programs such as counseling low-income people on how to get mortgages and for fair housing education and outreach.
Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., said that ACORN has received $53 million in taxpayer funds since 1994 and that the group was eligible for a wider set of funding in the pending legislation, which funds housing and transportation programs.
Read the full article here.