Dobbs again peddles baseless GOP claim that stimulus bill has $4 billion for ‘groups such as ACORN’

From MediaMatters: During the February 4 edition of CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, CNN host Lou Dobbs advanced the Republican talking point, for the second day in a row, that the House-passed recovery bill “call[s] for more than $4 billion … for something called ‘neighborhood stabilization activities.’ ” He added: “You want to know what that means? That means funding for low-income advocacy groups such as ACORN [the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now], which actually are partisan groups supporting President Obama and others through its voter registration drives and other activities.”

The previous day, Dobbs had claimed that “[t]here’s more than $4 billion for so-called neighbor — are you ready, neighborhood stabilization activities [in the recovery bill] — $4 billion, which translates into funding for so-called advocacy groups such as ACORN — ACORN, the left-wing advocacy group. That organization and its voter-registration drives are under investigation in more than a dozen states.”

In fact, as Media Matters for America has repeatedly documented, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act does not mention ACORN or otherwise single it out for funding; ACORN itself has said that it is ineligible for the funds and has no plans to apply for them. Dobbs’ claim is based on a misrepresentation of a provision of the bill that would appropriate $4.19 billion “for neighborhood stabilization activities related to emergency assistance for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed homes as authorized under division B, title III of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.”

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