Frank rebuffs GOP calls for ACORN hearings

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) on Wednesday dismissed GOP calls for immediate hearings regarding a grassroots group’s alleged abuse of government funds as a political tactic to help John McCain. 

His comments come in response to an Oct. 14 letter, signed by Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), Financial Services ranking member Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) and Republican members of the committee, requesting that Frank call hearings on the activities of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) and the group’s alleged ties to fraudulent voter registration.

{mosads}“Recent press accounts have listed allegations of voter fraud in Ohio, Nevada and Florida among others,” the letter said. “Given the reliance of ACORN on millions of dollars of federal funding from the housing GSE's [sic] and grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, it is imperative that the Financial Services Committee use its oversight authority to determine the accuracy of these reports.”

Frank disagreed.

“My Republican colleagues, in raising the issue of ACORN, which is unrelated to the subject of regulatory restructuring, have apparently decided to try to hijack the committee and turn it into an echo chamber in an effort help out the McCain campaign,” Frank said. “No legislation passed by the House has authorized or appropriated funds for ACORN.”

Republicans have seized on the alleged cases of voter fraud by the grassroots organization and successfully blocked Democratic attempts to insert funding into the financial rescue package passed Oct. 3 that they said would be given to ACORN. 

The GOP letter also requested that Frank add former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), to the witness list for a hearing on restructuring and reforming the financial system, a request to which Frank also declined to acquiesce, arguing that the full hearing held three weeks ago with the regulator and the former CEOs of the GSEs was sufficient.

“The focus of next Tuesday’s hearing is the future of financial market regulation,” he said. “If the Republicans were seriously interested in examining the causes of the sub-prime crisis, they would be insistent that we summon Alan Greenspan, who, as McCain adviser Mark Zandi has pointed out, refused to use the authority given to him by Congress in 1994 to prevent sub-prime abuses.”