Obama will have to support defunding ACORN or else..

Choose to abandon the federal expansion of student loans. As of today Obama does not think that ACORN is an important issue and will NOT commit to cutting off federal funding. At least know that Obama is a loyal man, so that's an admirable characteristic. After all, de-funding an organization that gave you so much political clout is probably reckless - even if that organization makes Cosa Nostra look like a legitimate business enterprise.

But Republicans pulled a fast one last week during the debate of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009 a very serious and imposing bill high on Obama's agenda list. While the bill itself is horrendous as it crowds out the private student loan business replacing it with a federal presence, Republicans tacked on via a motion to recommit an amendment to entirely strip ACORN of all it's federal funding. To be clear, this is different than the Senate's version of the HUD bill stripping ACORN Housing of funding. Most Republicans opposed this bill on basic principles and tried to kill the bill by putting in an impossible for the Democrats to sign amendment. To their utter shock and dismay, most Democrats went along with this amendment and approved a total de-funding of ACORN! In fact most legislators had no idea what was going on because the motion to recommit was never read and most Democrats voted per instruction. Imprtant to keep in mind that using motion to recommit to tack on provisions that have nothing to do with the bill is unusual and does not work.

So we have a very serious conundrum on our hands, one that Obama will surely appreciate if the final bill includes this provision. Assuming Senate produces a similar bill (unlikely) and able to reconcile, Obama will have to sign this bill along with the ACORN de-funding or veto the bill all together.

Detailed explanation of events that took place within the House can be found here.