Legal Commentary

Goverment to Only Do Business With Honest Contractors -- Military-Industrial Complex Faces Doom

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

HuffPo(*) has the scoop, Whoops: Anti-ACORN Bill Ropes In Defense Contractors, Others Charged With Fraud:

The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to “any organization” that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.

In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) picked up on the legislative overreach and asked the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to sift through its database to find which contractors might be caught in the ACORN net.

Here's the Project of Government Oversight (POGO) federal contractor misconduct database. And POGO has more; meanwhile Rep. Grayson is asking for people to crowdsource his list of companies caught by the rule. According to Huffpo,

Grayson then intends to file that list in the legislative history that goes along with the bill so that judges can reference it when determining whether a company should be denied federal funds.

All this because naming ACORN in the legislation creates a risk that the statute might be a bill of attainder.

This is an amazingly brilliant if impractical idea given the level of corruption in military and doubtless civilian procurement (sort of super-debarment for those versed in procurement law), but we all know it will never survive the legislative sausage factory.

(*)-Employs family member.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on September 23, 2009 (boomark / email).