Will Cap and Trade Resurrect ACORN?

The dead apparently really can rise from the grave.

Though Congress voted to kill federal funding for ACORN in September, funding for the disgraced group could resume as early as December 18th, when the Continuing Resolution, which provides funds to run government while the final budget is complete and contains the funding ban, expires.

The question isn’t whether federal funds will flow again to the ethically-challenged group, but possibly when and how much money will flow. If cap-and-trade legislation now making its way through Congress becomes law, the flow could be enormous.

In June, the U.S. House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (better known as Waxman-Markey), ostensibly to alleviate global warming by mandating an 83% reduction in U.S. carbon emissions by 2050. A similar bill, introduced in the Senate by Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA), has been approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Buried in both bills are provisions that would allocate vast amounts of federal money to community development organizations such as ACORN.

Members of Congress who played to public outrage by vociferously objecting to ACORN’s abuses may now want to take the time to read some of the more obscure provisions of the proposed climate bills.

Section 264 in the Waxman-Markey bill provides up to $300,000,000 in funding for “community development organizations” so they can assist businesses and others in low-income neighborhoods with “conservation strategies, supplies, and methods to improve energy efficiency.”

Stephen Spruiell and Kevin Williamson, writing for National Review, help put this funding in perspective: “Think federally-subsidized consultants paid $55 an hour to tell businesses to turn down their AC in the summer.”

The Kerry-Boxer bill contains similar language in Section 156, allocating up to $200,000,000 to “promote green development in distressed communities.”

The bill makes no mention of who would oversee such programs, but the intention is clear: community development organizations such as ACORN. In the time between the passage of Waxman-Markey bill in the House and the introduction of the Kerry-Boxer bill, reports of multiple ACORN scandals were front-page news. Seemingly recognizing how politically explosive it would be to include funding for “community development organizations,” Kerry and Boxer apparently deliberately obscured that fact.

One can debate the wisdom of spending hundreds of millions of dollars of “green development” in economically-distressed communities–and how effective this spending would be–at a time when the deficit is already $1.4 trillion and many Americans face financial uncertainty, with the official unemployment over 10% and black unemployment 15.7%.

What we shouldn’t debate is whether it is a wise idea to outsource these programs to community organizers. We shouldn’t. In the past such groups have misused federal funding, skirted tax laws, and strayed beyond their missions.

As Big Government readers know, ACORN has become the poster-child for scandal. During the last election cycle, a number of its members were charged with turning in thousands of false voter registration forms. Last year, the New York Times reported that Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, had embezzled nearly $1 million dollars from the organization Most recently, multiple ACORN housing workers were caught on film apparently facilitating prostitution and tax fraud.

ACORN hopes that if its headline-grabbing transgressions become distant memories, it, as the largest community-organizing group in America, would likely become a major beneficiary of cap-and-trade, should some version of Waxman-Markey or Kerry-Boxer become law. Such funding is even more probable given the large number of ACORN affiliates now promoting themselves as experts on environmental justice.

ACORN will likely also benefit from its close association with key players in the federal government, including President Barack Obama, who once worked closely with ACORN and has shown his continuing loyalty to the group by refraining from criticism, even while reports of its alleged unethical conduct headlined the news.

Groups across the ideological spectrum have rejected the cap-and-trade legislation as a misguided endeavor, likely to impede economic growth while delivering minimal environmental benefit. Polls show a mere 17% of the public supports federal funding for ACORN.

If sound public policy is the goal, either of these facts alone should consign the cap-and-trade proposal to a richly-deserved death.

These two facts combined should keep cap-and-trade in the grave. Permanently.