Lobbies to get a bigger piece of the action.
I suppose you could say that the new leading “Christian” charity/federal contractor hired by ORR to care for the “chiiildruuun” isn’t really made up of Baptists at all, they are just pretending to be so they can wear that ‘do-gooder’ white hat.
If I were of the Baptist faith, I’d be distancing myself from this bunch pretty quick.
Today the Daily Caller revealed that Baptist Child and Family Services (BCFS) is lobbying for its taxpayer-supplied moolah and may not have reported that fact properly on it’s tax returns.
The other contractors*** lobby as well, but they skirt along the edges of the law by doing grassroots lobbying and hiring Washington “representatives” which is legal I suppose, but ethically stinks. They all have developed networks of activists who will respond to action alerts by calling or otherwise contacting their elected Washington Representatives and testifying in Congress when appealing for more money and more refugees.
In fact, that (organize grassroots) is all those Tea Party groups that the IRS has cheated were asking for the right to do—but there is one big difference! Unlike these contractors masquerading as Christian charities (and one Jewish charity) that receive almost their entire budgets from the US Treasury, the Tea Party groups receive no funding from the taxpayer.
That is what is so maddening! The “humanitarian” hustlers are using your money to lobby for more of your money! There ought to be a law!
BCFS apparently doesn’t have any grassroots, so they hire lobbying firms to get their (big) piece of the pie.
From the Daily Caller:
A Texas-based organization that has been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts by the Obama administration to house illegal immigrant children not only lobbied the federal government, but also failed to properly disclose the activity.
After The Daily Caller inquired about its lobbying disclosures, BCFS, a San Antonio-based nonprofit, now says it may correct its tax forms to properly disclose its lobbying expenditures.
The Obama administration, through the Department of Health and Human Services, has tapped BCFS, formerly known as Baptist Child & Family Services, to provide security and other services to unaccompanied children at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, and Ft. Sill army base near Lawton, Okla.
BCFS has become the largest provider of such services for the child immigrants, who are part of a massive influx of mostly Central Americans that has put the Obama administration on its heels…
HHS has given BCFS $280 million in federal contracts for its services so far this year. Nearly all of that — $270 million — has been given for services for unaccompanied children. HHS has given BCFS $458 million in total, according to the Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System.
According to the Senate lobbying database, BCFS is the only organization that provides residential services directly for unaccompanied children that has spent money on lobbying.
Since 2006, BCFS has spent $210,000, according to a database maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Read it all, there is more and lots of links to follow.
See all of our previous posts on ‘unaccompanied minors’ by clicking here.
***The federal refugee resettlement contractors (we may have to start adding grant recipient big dogs Baptist Child and Family Services and Southwest Key Programs to our list):
- Church World Service (CWS)
- Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
- Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
- International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
- US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
- Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
- World Relief Corporation (WR)
Since I don’t know how many readers have a look at our Top Posts every day in the right hand sidebar, thought maybe I would, at the end of each week, give a brief summary of what readers were most interested in over the previous seven days.