Oh, the liberals will be screwed if(when) this happens:
Conservatives Must End Government Funding Of Non-Profits
By Jim Burns
CNS Senior Staff Writer
February 15, 2001
(CNSNews.com) - Thanks to Republican majorities in Congress and now a Republican president in the White House, Conservatives have the opportunity, for the first time since 1952, to take away federal funding of left wing non-profit groups. However, they must mobilize at the grass-roots level to get action from Congress as well as the executive branch in order to do it.
Taxpayers, according to research by the Capital Research Center, funded many left wing non-profits who campaigned against the nomination of John Ashcroft to Attorney General. Terrence Scanlon, president of the Capital Research Center, a group that styles itself as "The Philanthropic Watchdog" told the Conservative Action Political Conference in Washington that the left wing non-profits can be stopped and that's "good news."
"For the first time since 1952, we have a Republican Congress, House and Senate, we have a Republican President, so the agency heads will be hopefully mostly conservatives. So for the very first time we have an opportunity to go after these groups and take away their federal money. Let's do it," Scanlon said to thunderous applause.
As an example of a non-profit receiving huge federal funds, Scanlon named the American Association of Retired Persons, commonly known as the AARP.
"AARP received $73 million in federal grants in 1999. 73 million of your tax dollars went to the AARP. Most of this money came from the Labor Department for job training programs for seniors," Scanlon said.
However, Scanlon said the most "egregious" group to be receiving federal money is the National Council of Senior Citizens.
"This was a group that was started in 1960 during the Kennedy-Johnson campaign. They were well known four years ago during the Hillary Clinton health care debate when they were lobbying for national health care. Their budget is 96 percent federally funded. If it were not for federal dollars there would be no National Council of Senior Citizens," according to Scanlon.
Scanlon commended Senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) for attempting to take away federal funding from these non-profits during the last congressional session. Gregg may have lost the battle, but Scanlon believes his efforts gave conservatives much encouragement to keep up the fight.
A majority of non-profits in America are liberal, according to Scanlon, because Congress began giving federal grants to such groups back in the 1960s.
"Today, there are a billion non-profit organizations in the United States. Unfortunately, the majority are liberal. We're talking about Planned Parenthood, the NAACP, PETA, Children's Defense Fund. There have two things in common: they don't pay taxes on their revenues and the contributions made by their donors are tax deductible," Scanlon said.
The recent Ashcroft and Norton cabinet confirmations, Scanlon believes, illustrated "the power of these non-profit liberal groups who get government money. There was a meeting in Washington on January 9 sponsored by the American Association of University Women. There are some 50 liberal groups at the meeting and they were given an assignment to undo the nomination of Senator Ashcroft. We found that 18 of these groups receive considerable federal money in the prior four years."
Scanlon also said the National Resource Defense Council, which he said receives federal funds, campaigned against Gale Norton's confirmation as Interior Secretary.
"NRDC has a $30 billion budget based with lots of government money. One grant of $729,000 in 1998 was used for encouraging the purchase of energy efficient equipment, whatever that might be," Scanlon said.
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