CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – This month, the U.S. House passed a bill that would allow the government to end the tax-exempt status of organizations that are deemed to support terrorist groups. However, many organizations worry about the potential impact of this law if it passed.
The Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee said “Congress must act to stop this abuse of our tax code that is funding terrorism around the world.”
However, the ACLU said this bill was a clear reaction to pro-Palestine protests, adding it wasn’t a stretch to see how the bill could be used to pressure universities to shut down student groups and criminalize dissent.
TV9 spoke to a Cedar Rapids nonprofit that works refugees from all over the world to get its perspective.
The Catherine McAuley Center (CMC) in Cedar Rapids does a lot of things: “English as a second language, transportation classes, resource navigation classes, cultural orientation,” according to Rachel Cohen, Director of Development and Communications at CMC.
They serve a lot of people including immigrants, refugees, and women experiencing homelessness.
“We have 1,000 people come through our building every year,” said Cohen.
Those people come from more than 50 different countries including ones like Afghanistan, known to host designated terrorist organizations.
Cohen said H.R. 9495 was definitely on her radar.
“The bill as it’s written is very, very broad and that’s not something that we want to support. We all reached out to our representatives and just, you know, encouraged, ‘Maybe give us a little bit more information on what this is going to look like.”
Critics have said along with being broad, the bill doesn’t provide due process.
“It also seems like there’s no recourse. There’s not a lot of ways that, you know, a nonprofit or an organization could say ‘No, we don’t do that.‘”
Tv9 asked, if this bill does pass, and for some reason CMC was targeted and stripped of its 501(c)3 status, what would the impact be?
“I can’t even possibly imagine what that would be. I don’t think I would want to talk about it.”
Cohen said without 501(c)3 status, the nonprofit wouldn’t be able to exist. That’s not on the immediate horizon, but Cohen is still paying attention.
“I think we’re all playing wait and see. It’s just a wait and see. We have to do our day-to-day. We have to continue our services. We have to work as hard as we work. None of that is going to change,” she said.
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