Opinion: Veterans Charity Abuses Show Need for Regulation

Congress needs to take action to ensure that charities are properly spending charitable donations, says an editorial in The New York Times.

Rep. Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, whose Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held hearings on the problems at veterans charities that appear to have spent too much on overhead and too little on real charitable programs, said the abuses are an “intolerable fraud.”

“There is very little regulation in the charity game,” they write, and too much leeway is given to nonprofit officials. Congress must now “follow through with stricter oversight and disclosure rules so Americans don’t have to rely on House committee hearings to know where their money is being misspent.”

Read The Chronicle’s coverage of the latest hearing by the House committee on fund-raising regulation.

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