House Republicans are again considering whether do defund ACORN — a defunct organization. Which proves that all of the country’s nuts are not found in the mouths of squirrels or on your grocery shelf:
When House GOP leaders abruptly shelved a bill to fund standard federal transportation and housing programs last Wednesday, one of the legislation’s few uncontroversial provisions was a section banning funds for the anti-poverty group ACORN. Had Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) been able to pass the bill, it would have marked the 13th time that Republicans have voted to block federal funding for ACORN since the GOP took over the lower chamber in 2011.
Oddly, however, ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, does not exist. And it did not exist at any time when the House GOP has held a vote on ACORN’s access to government monies — the group disbanded in the spring of 2010.
Just why, exactly, the House GOP keeps voting to ban funding for an organization that was extinguished more than three years ago remains something of a mystery, and the subject of Democratic ridicule.
“Word is the majority will also prohibit foreign aid to the Ottoman Empire this year,” a Democratic congressional aide snarked to HuffPost. (Like ACORN, the Ottoman Empire does not exist.)
Actually, that would fit into the pattern, wouldn’t it?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.