The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“THE 2000 CENSUS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1462-H1468 on March 18, 1999.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE 2000 CENSUS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. MILLER of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address an issue of great importance to this country, and that is the upcoming 2000 census.
In 12 months we will be having forms in the mail to everybody in this great country to complete for the decennial census, something that has been conducted since Thomas Jefferson conducted the first census in 1790. The census is critical to the Democratic system that we have in this country. It is the DNA of our democracy. And we need to do everything we can to have the most accurate and trusted census that can be done.
In 1990, we missed 1.6 percent of the American people in that count, and we need to try to do better. A problem in the past has been something called a differential undercount, where some segments of the population do not get counted as high a percentage as other segments. For example, American Indians are hard to count, and we need to put special efforts to go out and count the American Indian. And for all the other segments of our population that are hard to count, whether it is immigrants, or inner-city minorities.
It is the right thing to do for this country, because it is the right thing that everybody should count, and we need to put all the resources into making the year 2000 census the best ever.
When Thomas Jefferson conducted the first census back in 1790, they did not have a mail system that would deliver the census forms. It was done by horseback going out and finding people. They obviously missed people in 1790, and they have missed people ever since then. But every year we should try to do as good as we can.
The Clinton administration came up with a new plan this time around. They proposed to use sampling. The original plan was that they were going to count 90 percent of the population and use sampling and guesstimating for the other 10 percent. A very risky plan; very dangerous plan, in my opinion. It was destined to fail because it would not be trusted by the American people. We not only have to have the most accurate census possible but we must have it trusted by the American people.
To go out and use polling techniques to estimate the population just will not work in this country. It is too important of an issue. And it was illegal. The Constitution is very clear; it calls for an actual enumeration. We, the Republican majority, told the administration it was illegal. And in an agreement in October-November of 1997, it was agreed to proceed to court, to let the court decide whether it was legal. This past January the Supreme Court ruled that it is an illegal plan, for purposes of apportionment, the 90 percent population count.
And so, thank goodness, the court decided before the Clinton administration had proceeded all the way to conduct an illegal census. We had been telling them for years it was illegal; it was wrong. But it finally took the Supreme Court to tell them it was illegal.
Now the Clinton administration has decided, well, it is only illegal for apportionment. We will do a second sample for purposes of redistricting, which is drawing the lines within a State.
Apportionment is concerned with the number of representatives each State will have. So that has been resolved. That has been decided, and the administration has agreed to go ahead and do a full enumeration for that. But redistricting and apportionment go together. We cannot separate them. But what they want to do now is have a second set of numbers.
Now, just imagine what this will be like. Two numbers. A two-number census. Never been done in history. The Census Bureau has been saying for years we cannot do a two-number census. It is wrong. I agree with the Bureau. But political pressure was brought to bear on the Census Bureau, sadly. The Census Bureau should not be influenced by politics, but they are very much being influenced this year. And that is very sad for the Census Bureau today and certainly for years to come that they have allowed political pressure to let them make bad public policy decisions.
This is bad public policy. Just think, my home of Bradenton, Florida, is going to have two numbers, one set of numbers will be for approval by the Supreme Court and another set of numbers will be the Clinton numbers. Because what the President wants to do is do the full enumeration, that will be the full count, and then adjust those numbers to say these are the other set of numbers. Two sets of numbers for the same date. And the census date is April 1 of 2000.
How confusing can it get? It is going to be so controversial and so tied up in the courts that it is going to mess up redistricting throughout the country. Not just for Congress but, as I said, this is the DNA of our democracy, because most elected officials in America are having districts drawn based on the census. So every State representative, every State Senator, school board member, county commissioner, city council person who represents a district, where they have to divide up by population, are going to have those districts tied up in courts for years to come.
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It will be an absolute disaster. So it is terrible policy that this administration is proceeding along the lines of something that is illegal. It is illegal, and we have been telling them for years it has been illegal. I do not know what legal advice they are getting. Because reapportionment and redistricting are in effect the same thing.
What is going to make it even more illegal is that the results of these adjusted numbers are less accurate. The statistics are not valid. Because when they go to redistricting, what they do is they work with census blocks. They do not work with the city population numbers. They work with blocks. And a block may have 20 homes. It may have 50 homes.
Now, in the big city it may have an apartment high-rise and they could have a thousand or so people in it or more of course. But most of them are smaller. There are millions of census blocks in this country. And so what they are going to do is use a sample of 300,000 units to adjust all the millions of census blocks in the country. It makes no sense.
Even the Academy of Sciences, would has been politically used in this case sadly, a very distinguished, reputable organization that has been politically manipulated, they have even said that a sample size of 300,000 for redistricting purposes is marginally acceptable at statewide populations if you take the total State population of Arizona or Florida, but when we get down to within the State, it will lead to considerable variability.
This is snake oil that has been peddled by the Democratic party that this is going to solve all their problems. It is not going to solve any problems because the courts are going to throw it out. It is illegal. So how they use it if it is going to be thrown out in the courts?
So it is a sad situation that efforts we are making to try to improve the census are being opposed because all they want to do is sample, sample, sample. They have this one-track mind. And all I can tell them is it is illegal, unconstitutional, and it is wrong. And it is bad statistics.
I used to teach statistics for years in college. I know something about statistics. They can use statistics and they can manipulate them. My first lecture in statistics, when I was teaching at Georgia State University in Atlanta for years, was how to lie with statistics and it was on different channels and methods of how to do that.
When you use a measurement of central tendency, which is the mean, medium, and mode, they are different numbers; and we can say, which is better to describe it, the medium number or the mean number or the modal number? And it is used all the time.
Davis-Bacon, by the way, they use the modal number and it gets a higher dollar amount. It is interesting what number they choose to manipulate. So we have some serious problems with the administration, the dangers we are going to have with a failed census.
We introduced the ACT program, I have introduced, which are 10 measures to improve the census and I am going to go over those in a few minutes because it is going to I think help improve the census. And we had a big markup yesterday.
But my colleague the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth) has joined me on floor. We had two field hearings this past few months, one in Miami in December, and we were out in January in Arizona. And as I said earlier, the most undercounted population we are dealing with are the American Indians. And one of the concerns we had is how do we improve the count on American Indians.
I am from a beautiful Gulf Coast area on the Gulf Coast of Mexico, a very different area from the large district that the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth) represents. But by going to the area and having a field hearing in Arizona and listening to tribal leaders, it was very enlightening to understand and see their concerns. So we really appreciate the effort my colleague made to make it possible for the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney), the ranking member of the committee, and myself to be there.
Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have my colleague the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth) with me today, and I yield to him.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller) for yielding. And I would likewise thank the chairman for his willingness to come to the youngest of the 48 contiguous States, the great State of Arizona, which did not enter this Union until Valentine's Day of 1912 in the administration of one William Howard Taft.
I might also point out that the Sixth Congressional District, which I am honored to represent, is an area in square mileage almost the size of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, from the hamlet of Franklin in the south just there alongside the New Mexico border in southern Greenlee County, from Franklin north to Four Corners, the only point geographically common to four States in our Union, west of Flagstaff and south again to Florence, a district that continues to grow with a sizable portion of metropolitan Maricopa County.
And indeed, according to the latest studies of population there, last year Maricopa County, Arizona, welcomed 86,000 new residents, second only to Los Angeles County, California. So it is a growing area, experiencing much the same growth that my friend from Florida can attest for his sunshine State.
But in the Grand Canyon State and indeed throughout the United States of America, Mr. Speaker, there are grave concerns. I certainly yield to my colleague from Florida in terms of his knowledge of statistics and his background as a man of science and an educator in talking about statistics. And I am reminded, I believe the line was from Mark Twain,
``statistics do not lie but liars occasionally use statistics.''
I would echo the observation of my friend from Florida that is seriously disturbing. It has been frustrating enough to see the lack of personal responsibility on the part of this administration, certainly personal conduct of the President of the United States, the misguided, if not arrogant, admonition of the Vice President of the United States when discussions of his own misconduct came up when he said, ``my legal counsel informs me there is no controlling legal authority,'' not only an absurdity but close indeed, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, to an obscenity in terms of its arrogance. And moving past that, recent revelations involving the unlawful transfer of technology to the People's Republic of China, resulting today in a vote by this House to at long last approve a missile defense.
The committees of this Congress must continue their vigilance and their oversight of serious matters involving the lack of propriety in terms of soliciting campaign donations from the People's Republic of China and subsequently action taken to transfer technology to that nation's military, putting Americans at risk.
But now my colleague from Florida has pointed out the latest outrage. My colleagues, we all take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States; and when we raise our right hands and take that oath, that oath means something. It means that we all recognize the Constitution and the wonderful tools our Founders gave us to make us a Nation of laws and not of men, sadly, events of this past year which seem to indicate the opposite, that we are a Nation of one man's whims and not of law.
I would refer us to article 1, section 2, quoting now the actual enumeration. ``Shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States and within every subsequent term of 10 years in such manner as they shall by law direct,'' speaking of this legislative prerogative.
We should also point out with our constitutional republic, our system of three separate and coequal branches of government, there is an arbiter, an interpreter. The judiciary branch. And the ultimate authority is, of course, the Supreme Court of the United States.
And as my colleague from Florida pointed out earlier, and as we must continue to reiterate, the Supreme Court of the United States, in January of this year, banned sampling, banned this hocus-pocus, indeed in a phrase that General Eisenhower used for a lot of scientific ledger domain, he called it sophisticated nonsense, the Supreme Court banned this type of inventive counting or projections or sophisticated nonsense and said to all of us, whether the President of the United States, Mr. Speaker, or a Member of Congress, or any citizen in this country, and most specifically, he who is directed to in fact be the director of the census, that, no, there will not be sampling. Instead, there will be an actual enumeration, as the Constitution calls for.
And yet the arrogance and, by any fair measure, dare I say the lawlessness, is so rampant that they would have a director of our census essentially thumb his nose at the Supreme Court of the United States, at the Congress of the United States, and then say to the American people, well, the Constitution may call for an actual enumeration but, gee, that is just not good enough. Because to fit our partisan designs, and let us speak plainly, Mr. Speaker, in a town enshrouded, as I have said before, with almost a perspective borrowed from that Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale dealing with the emperor's new clothes, when people fail to understand realty or fail to square up to it, let us understand this: Sadly this administration, it would seem, can only measure its so-called legacy, to use the term of the punditocracy, its so-called legacy in political terms and somewhere along the line something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. Because, in our constitutional republic, honest convictions deeply held articulated in this chamber with free debate are held amongst political adversaries or opponents.
But somehow, sadly, some folks in this town have changed that to start to think of the majority in Congress as their sworn enemy. How else are we to interpret the provocative action of the director of the census, who says to the Supreme Court, well, you may have told us that the Constitution says sampling is banned based on your opinion, but we are going to double count.
Mr. Speaker, if the double-talk were not enough from this bunch at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, now we are treated to a double count. And what they are saying, in an arrogant and dangerously partisan fashion, is that an actual enumeration of citizens mandated by the document to which we all swear our allegiance when we take our oath of office and validated, amplified again by the findings of the Supreme Court of this Nation in January, somehow that is not good enough. And they, in their arrogance and in their desire to shape a legacy born of any means necessary politically, will invent people, will invent numbers, will supplement their double-talk with a double count. It is tragic that we have reached such a stage.
Mr. MILLER of Florida. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, it is so frustrating dealing with this administration to have a Clinton set of numbers and a Supreme Court approved set of numbers. We have been telling them for years it is illegal. I do not know where they get their legal advice, but their lawyers are telling them bad information.
We had an agreement with them, it was signed into law back in October-November of 1997, to be prepared for a full enumeration. And they would not even do that. They were not getting prepared. And they were so arrogant as saying, our lawyers are right and we are going to win this or the Supreme Court will rule after the census is done and then we will win it that way.
I kind of feel sorry for the professionals over at the Census Bureau today because there are some good professionals there and they are being driven by political pressure from the White House to do things that are bad public policy, bad science and statistics, and it is illegal. And it is an embarrassment for the real professionals that are over there that the politics weigh so heavy on them. Because ultimately it is going to be declared illegal.
What they are saying is apportionment is illegal but then they are going to do redistricting with a separate set of numbers, and the courts are going to rule there the same thing.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would further yield, I would like to take advantage of his expertise and his study of this issue and his leadership as the chairman the subcommittee most accountable for the census and in terms of Congressional oversight and execution of such account.
We have established the sad realty that, for a variety of reasons, starting and in fact ending at the top, that is at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, with our chief executive and his already well-
established lack of regard for the statutes and the laws of the land, that this is going to continue apace.
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I was wondering if my friend from Florida in laymen's terms could explain the deficiencies of sampling. It has been described to me as almost inventing people, or projecting numbers based on a count and then to actually cease a count and start an extrapolation.
Could he put it in laymen's terms so those of us who join these proceedings and our citizenry from coast to coast could understand this a little better?
Mr. MILLER of Florida. We are talking about using sampling. Sampling, we all use it for polling. We read the polls in the newspapers all the time. Politicians use them all the time. Marketing companies will use polling. Polling and sampling is used when you do not have enough time or money to take a full census, which is a full count. But the Constitution requires a full count every 10 years. In between, we will use sampling. It has got an appropriate role because you cannot go out and count everybody every year. The plan that has now been proposed the way it would work is, they would do the full count as best they could. Then they would take a sample of 300,000 units, housing units, and use those numbers to then adjust the 270 million people in this country.
You have population numbers for the State of Florida, the State of Arizona, you will have it for the city of Phoenix, the county of Maricopa County, the county of Manatee County or Sarasota County. But then it gets down to the numbers that you use for redistricting are small units, the smallest units. And if you look at how they draw them on a computer map, these are census blocks. How do you go and adjust a census block with 20 housing units in it based on a sample of 300,000 nationwide?
What is going to happen is in your area of Phoenix, they are going to take population estimates from Utah and New Mexico, probably California and Nevada, lump them together and then they are going to come back and adjust your census block where you live in Arizona.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Let me see if this analogy works, because from time to time, the attorneys might say, there is a preponderance of physical evidence that I battle with my physique, the scale. This almost sounds like in lieu of weighing myself on a calibrated scale, that I take my two youngest children, aged 8 and 5, because, after all, they possess DNA, which is a part of me, and they have my hereditary characteristics and to achieve a desired weight, I would put them on the scales and then extrapolate based on statistical samples such as the ideal height and weight charts, the actuarial tables we see from different life insurance companies, and rather than take an actual number from the scale, through statistical legerdemain, we would project a desired outcome. Is that an apt analogy?
Mr. MILLER of Florida. Yes. The idea is, they are going to do something called adjustment this time around. It is a little different from the original sampling plan. They are going to do adjustment. The real set of numbers, so your scale shows you have a weight of 190 pounds, and I am being very generous.
Mr. HAYWORTH. That is the desired weight. Thanks very much.
Mr. MILLER of Florida. That is your desired, your goal. But then they will come back, they are going to adjust a number. They say, well, your scale shows 193, but we think because your shoes are heavy and your tie weighs so much, we are going to jump that up to 247. That is how they are going to adjust. They are doing it a little different than the sample originally proposed.
Mr. HAYWORTH. So it is as if we had the scales and the thumb rather than, well, perhaps the heavy hand of government is going to rest on that scale to produce the desired outcome based on political pressure from the White House and the marching orders that the Director of the Census has been given to maximize numbers in such a way, devoid of actual enumeration, to produce a desired outcome.
Mr. MILLER of Florida. That is a good description.
Mr. HAYWORTH. In fact, since we are dealing with a crowd, of course, who give us different definitions for the word ``is'' and the meaning of the word ``alone,'' who tell us that China should be our strategic partner although we know now in the fullness of time that strategic partnership dealt with a particular presidential campaign, this Clinton-Gore team's reelection effort in 1996, now we have a new definition of counting and a new definition of what the census should be. So we are getting all of this double talk and followed by a double count from this crowd down at the Census Bureau.
Mr. MILLER of Florida. That is very sad, because we need to have the census to be successful and the most accurate numbers possible, but it has got to be trusted by the American people. As I say, every city councilperson in this country, county commissioner, State representative, State senator, Member of the House of Representatives, their districts are going to be drawn based on these numbers. If they do not trust those numbers, they are not going to trust the system. Our democracy really is fundamentally at stake in this issue.
The gentleman actually said the Clinton administration is not high on the trust scale, whether it is in the foreign policy area with China, how you take a deposition, it raises a question, can you trust these numbers? If you have a set of numbers that are approved by the Supreme Court and a set of numbers that Clinton has manipulated to get to, which ones are you going to take? It is logical you are going to take the Supreme Court set of numbers, but they are going to try to force cities and counties and State legislatures to use these manipulated numbers. That is wrong.
Mr. HAYWORTH. If the gentleman will yield on that point, I should make the point, Mr. Speaker, that just yesterday I was contacted by members of the Arizona legislature concerned about this. Indeed, in recent weeks, officials of county government nationwide and from the various cities have visited Washington. All of the mayors and the county executives and the State legislators with whom I have spoken have expressed grave concerns about the machinations of this administration and its apparent willingness once again, quite frankly, to disobey the law of the land.
So, Mr. Speaker, again in our constitutional republic, given the magnificent ability to freely express ideas, and mindful of this free flow of information from coast to coast and to Alaska and Hawaii, once again, Mr. Speaker, we have to call the American people to action.
There are those when I first came here, Mr. Speaker, who spoke of some sort of revolution. Our Vice President, the same Vice President who claimed just last week he was the father of the Internet and he has cleared all sorts of new ground with a double ax in his farming days, that selfsame Vice President speaks of a reinvention of government.
Mr. Speaker, I believe quite frankly both of those labels miss the mark. I believe what we should be about in this Congress, whether conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, what we should be about is a restoration, not a revolution, not a reinvention but a restoration, and that is to say that we should take quite literally what our Founders said to be the law of the land. We stand here at the outset of every congressional session, those of us who have been honored with election, and we take an oath to uphold the Constitution. It calls for enumeration, counting of citizens. The Supreme Court has upheld it, and yet this crowd on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue wants to ignore it. I think my colleague from Florida is correct to point out the concerns of the cities, the counties and State governments in this regard, and, Mr. Speaker, I would call on the great grassroots of America to let their thoughts be known.
There is one other question I have for my colleague from Florida. I have heard talk, again from what I call the punditocracy, all the folks who show up on television to offer their opinions of the day and offer them in a variety of columns on the opinion-editorial pages of papers around the country, I have heard that again this political mission is so important to our current President that he may be willing to shut down the government over this issue. Is there some veracity to that possibility?
Mr. MILLER of Florida. It was reported in the New York Times recently that, last fall, in order to get Democratic support for that omnibus appropriation bill, the President sent a letter to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), the minority leader, saying that he will veto any legislation that keeps them from doing sampling. That means the upcoming appropriation bills that fund the census, but it not only funds the census, that particular bill will fund the FBI, the State Department, the embassies around the world, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Border Patrol, the Weather Bureau. He has said he will veto anything that keeps him from being able to do sampling, which is illegal.
Mr. HAYWORTH. I just have a thought, if my friend from Florida would yield. We hear so much talk in this city about civility, and, of course, we should recognize that the first rule of civility is telling the truth. But apart from that, we also hear how there should be bipartisanship. Indeed today on this floor at long last, despite the best efforts of liberals in this Chamber to drag their feet and delay and oppose a strategic missile defense system, at long last this Congress had a bipartisan vote saying it will be the mission of this country to act in its own self-defense for a strategic missile system. Perhaps, Mr. Speaker, it would be good for our friends on the other side of the aisle to join us in true bipartisanship.
Now, of course, Washington, and sadly members of the press corps here have a very interesting definition of what is bipartisan. In this town, to hear the liberal community speak, whether from the printed page or from the political rhetoric of the other side, bipartisanship means the majority abandoning the goals for which it was elected to be made malleable and reshaped by the whim of the minority. I do not believe that definition of bipartisanship, as prevalent as it may be in some Georgetown parlors and down the street at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, is really an operative definition of bipartisanship. Far better that our friends who seek civility opt for the truth and join us in an intellectually rigorous, honorable and honest count, enumeration for the census as called for in our Constitution and as reaffirmed this past January by the Supreme Court. I think that would be a step toward true civility. That would be a step toward true bipartisanship. I would say tonight that we reach out and extend our hand to say, let us preserve the Constitution. Here is another chance to stand up for the rule of law, here is another chance to act like statesmen. Join us in following the edicts of the Constitution and the decisions of the Supreme Court.
Mr. MILLER of Florida. We talk about truth and working together. Yesterday we marked up seven bills in the Committee on Government Reform to improve the census. We mentioned one that involves trust and local officials that we have talked about, the mayors and commissioners that we have been hearing about from our district. That is something called post-census local review. It was used in 1990. What it is, is after the census is started, the local communities get a chance to verify the housing units in their area. They have a final check on the numbers before they become published numbers, to catch mistakes. Because mistakes are made. We had a hearing on this. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Petri) was talking about up in his district, a whole ward, a mistake was made and it was left out. The idea is let the local communities have one last chance to look at the numbers and verify the housing units in their community, their city, their county, whatever the jurisdictional area we are talking about. It makes sense. It is a trust factor.
They are opposed to it. The President sent a letter, he will veto us. It was done in 1990. It cost $7 million in 1990. We are not talking about a huge sum of money. But it gives a trust, a chance for the local cities. The National League of Cities is supporting this, the National Association of Towns and Townships is supporting this, all kinds of mayors. They have gotten to the big city mayors. Mayor Archer of Detroit added 45,000 people in 1990. Wow, that is a lot of people. Now he is opposed to it. But it is an optional thing. You do not have to participate. Detroit got 45,000 people going through the program the last time. If Mayor Archer does not want to participate, let him not participate. As a matter of fact, we may even put in the legislation that Mayor Archer and the city of Detroit cannot participate, I do not know. But it is amazing. They have sold snake oil to the Democratic big city mayors because they have said, ``We're going to get sampling, it will solve all our problems, it will add all these extra people to your cities if you will let us use sampling, so you need to oppose post-
census local review.''
They do not trust their local officials? I know it is a pain. They would have to deal with all the mayors, the city managers, the county commissioners. But they are opposing it and Clinton is going to veto the bill. It will probably be on the floor of the House maybe this coming week and we will be able to debate it.
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I am anxious again for the Democrats to explain: Oh, we do not trust the mayors, we do not trust these city managers to look at our numbers of housing units.
I am in a growing area, the gentleman from Oklahoma has all this growth. New developments are going in all the time, new streets, new houses. Who knows best where they are? You know who knows best? They know over at the Census Bureau in Washington. We do not know back home.
Mr. HAYWORTH. And moreover, my colleague from Florida made mention of the fact that I am also honored to represent more Native Americans than any other Member of Congress in the United States; indeed almost one quarter of the population of the Sixth Congressional District of Arizona is American Indian; and, as was pointed out in the hearings held in Phoenix, many of those Native Americans live in remote areas, areas where they are known, for example, on the great and sovereign Navajo Nation, in areas with a lack of population density; but those in the chapter houses, in the local units of government, tribal government at its most basic, know where the people live, you see, because it is where they grew up.
But what a metaphor for the two different attitudes that exist now in the final days of the 20th century in Washington, D.C. You have the new majority, which believes that one size does not fit all, that our policies should not be Washington bureaucrat driven, that we should not check common sense or the power of observation at a department level door or a cubicle in Washington, D.C., that instead we should turn to local experts, to those who are living their daily lives in their locales, in their communities, with special challenges who acknowledge that Phoenix, Arizona, is a different place from Phoenix City, Alabama.
And then on the other hand, we have our friends on the left who continue to embrace this outmoded notion that only Washington knows best, that somehow inside this Beltway, within the parameters made possible by the Potomac, that only those who sit here and work at a desk in a cubicle for the Federal Government have the answer, and how dare mayors, and city councilmen, and county executives, and State legislators and those closer to the situation and the true meaning of federalism, how dare they, as duly elected officials, weigh in knowing traffic patterns, knowing housing patterns, knowing their cities, towns, boroughs and counties, how dare they step up when instead we can have people in Washington who can guess and guess through statistical legerdemain of the very clever way to produce a desired political outcome.
Indeed, as our good friend and colleague, the gentleman from Ohio and chairman of the Committee on the Budget (Mr. Kasich) says, this common sense majority is all about transferring money, power and influence out of the hands of Washington bureaucrats and back home to people who live their daily lives and now again in a most reckless transparently political and lawless fashion the crowd on the left wants to say: Washington knows best, we are going to continue the double-talk, have a double count and twist and shape the equations and numbers for our own desired ends.
It is sick, it is cynical, and, Mr. Speaker, I reflect on a term that was coined when I was growing up in describing another liberal administration in this town in its conduct of foreign policy and a variety of other issues. In the late 1960's there was talk of a credibility gap. Mr. Speaker, how sad it is that in the case of this crowd we have a credibility canyon. Indeed rhetorically it rivals the splendor of the Grand Canyon within the boundaries of my great State. In Washington, D.C. there is this credibility canyon whether in terms of personal responsibility, or boastful claims or arrogant assertions that someone is above the law or, in another fashion, there is no controlling legal authority.
Now again we are confronted with the incredible swath and distance, the gulf between the objective truth and the sick, cynical, political manipulation of victimhood and arrogance that says: We are above the law. We are not going to listen to the Supreme Court. We are not going to listen to the American people. But in a most cynical fashion we will twist the numbers and come up with account that achieves its desired ends, and that is basically the debate in full flower we are seeing.
The question is one of trust. As my colleague from Florida says: Who do you trust? At long last, Mr. Speaker, who can you trust? Good people can disagree. This is not about the merits of disagreement. This is about the designs of a sick, cynical scheme and a bald face grab for power.
Mr. MILLER of Florida. As I mentioned, we in the committee yesterday marked up bills to improve the census, and you would think they would want to have the ideas of Congress, like the post-census local review. Give those local officials like they had in 1990 a chance to have a quality check.
Another issue: They are opposing, and let me tell my colleagues this. They are opposing making the census form available in numerous languages and Braille. They said we are going to put it in five languages besides English, and if you know of another language, tough. You have to call an 800 number, and hopefully you will find somebody who can translate. And if you are blind, you know, tough. I mean what do you do?
That is so sad. They are opposed to it. It is not that difficult to make available forms for those that request it to get these forms.
I was in Miami. We had a hearing back in December. The gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek) has about 150,000 Haitians in her district. Now a lot of them have not learned English yet, and how do they fill out a form?
Our colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) from Long Beach, he has about 50,000 Cambodians in his district. Now how do they fill out a form if an elderly person? Now somebody would say, oh, they should not be counted, but everybody living in this country gets counted. It is required by our United States Constitution. And here is amazing; this is the Democratic party that wants to reach out to everybody, and they are refusing to publish the seven questions, only seven questions, in these languages, and one of our bills is to put it out in 33 languages plus Braille rather than the five languages. Their argument is, well, our five languages, we get 99 percent of the people. Well, 1 percent of the American people is 2.7 million people, and we only missed 1.6 percent of the population last time.
Why are they afraid to do that? I mean it is the Republicans are out there trying to make it more accessible, to have everybody fill out the form, and so I mean it is so frustrating that they say we are perfect, we do not make mistakes, and we are all professionals and, you know, do not micromanage. Well, do not micromanage? They are the ones that spent a billion dollars over the past 7 years on a illegal plan, and it was not until January that they, you know, we got hit in the head. They realized, yes, it was illegal, and they said that is the reason we are going to go to two numbers.
I mean it is an amazing organization to deal with, and these other ideas we are proposing. It was another one they are opposed to is, and this has support from General Accounting Office and at one time the Academy of Sciences supported it. We get one form in the mail, and, you know, hopefully everybody returns it, we get as many as we can returned. But if you send the second form as a reminder, it will increase response rates by 6 or 7 percent.
They tried that out when they did what is called a dress rehearsal last year in Sacramento and Columbia, South Carolina. They will get a 6 or 7 percent improvement on response rate. That is about 19 million people. That many fewer forms have to be filled out. And they are opposed to it. They are going to fight it, and the President is going to veto it. He is going to veto those 33 languages. He is going to veto post-census review.
I do not understand their logic. It is so frustrating.
I mean even we had one program we debated for probably 45 minutes yesterday in committee. It is something called Census In The School program. It is a good program, and I hope when it becomes available that you can go to your schools and promote it, especially when you go to the Indian schools which we visited when we were in your district. It was really kind of neat to see the Indian schools there because what the Census In School form is is going to be a form that is going to be sent out to the teachers of elementary schools, in elementary schools, and selected teachers in middle and secondary schools that teach geography, I think government, math, I think three different categories, and the idea is they will get a request. If they want to participate in the program, send back a card, and they will get maps and materials, and it is a good way to teach a civics lesson, and, you know, they can teach mathematics, they can teach geography. There are lots of things kids can learn about the census and the Constitution on it, if the teachers want to. So we are going to make it available.
The Census Bureau was only going to make it available to 20 percent of the schools, and we think it is a good program. So we commend them and say we think it should be made available to everybody, all the schools. They are contracting it out, so it is not like extra work for them.
There is a group called Scholastic, Inc., that has got the contract, and it is just a matter of sending the letter to all these teachers, and if they like it, send back a card. And they fought us, and fought us, and fought us yesterday over that issue, and they finally agreed to let it go by voice vote.
And I understand. I said, ``Are you opposed to 60 percent of the teachers receiving this? Why are you opposed to the possibility of helping kids?'' We can get Members of Congress to go to schools in their district to help promote it. It is something that is good civics, it is good public policy, and you know they finally gave in and voice voted. It was amazing.
Mr. HAYWORTH. If the gentleman from Florida will yield for a second, this is very interesting because once again we see the gulf between rhetoric and reality because our President and liberal Members of this House come to this floor, and indeed the President of the United States stood at this rostrum a couple of months ago and told us how important education was and how we should put our children first. And of course now we find that our children, as they go to sleep at night, are within the target range of Chinese missiles, and, moreover, that the liberal minority in this House actually does not want to utilize a great civics lesson and participation in understanding the role constitutionally of the decennial census, that as its name implies, comes but once every 10 years, and to miss this historic opportunity when the claims constantly are of concern for the children and wanting to improve education. And again, it is yet another sad piece of evidence in this credibility canyon which is come to exist in Washington D.C., certainly not as splendid as our Grand Canyon, but one that we will have a long time trying to reconcile.
Mr. MILLER of Florida. One of the other ones that was interesting in the debate yesterday, and this came out of our hearing out in Phoenix and in Miami, and one of the things that the tribal leaders, for example, and representatives of communities in Miami like the Haitian community and such is they want to say we want to help, we want to give, you know, and their best and most knowledgeable about whether it is their tribe or their community in Miami or Detroit or wherever, but we need some help. What can, you know, the Census Bureau do for us? What can the government do for them?
One idea we came up with is a partnership program, it is a grant program, matching grant program for $26 million. It is not a huge amount of money, you know, for the entire country, but it is a one-shot deal so that if the tribes and we need some help within our tribe to go out and, you know, get the people to fill out the forms, or if the Haitian community wants to get, you know it can be nonprofit groups, it can be governmental groups. They can request a grant, and they say all these excuses. Census Bureau, we are not into the grant making business. Okay. Well, let the Commerce Department do it, Commerce Department which oversees, of course, the Census Bureau. They give grants all the time, let them do it. What is wrong with it? What is the harm of it? This is what we find out in field hearings in Phoenix and in Florida, and they fought us on it and fought us on it, and they finally reluctantly said it is not even worth the trouble.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Well, my friend from Florida has cleared up one mystery. There are many citizens around this country that really wondered about the function of the Commerce Department to begin with. So at least now we know that the Commerce Department is the Cabinet level agency that has authority over the census.
So, that is important to know, that there is that very important and vital function, but my colleague from Florida is quite right. I can recall in our hearing in Phoenix and in our visit to the Gila River Indian community and meeting with the school kids and the citizens of the health clinic and those who are involved in the tribal council that here are people who appreciate the notion of self government and sovereignty who are willing to count and willing to meet those challenges and eager to do so. And then you have the situation like just occurred in the committee where actually one has to pull teeth with the minority side to move to reasonable, rational positions to bring about the desired goal of a full count or at least what should be the desired goal of a full count.
{time} 2000
Mr. MILLER of Florida. There is one bill that the minority did support and this is one that the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek) was pushing and I was supportive of, and this is something that came out in the hearings in Phoenix also with the tribal leaders, is to be able to hire the people go out and do the knocking on doors and helping count those who do not fill out their forms and get them back in. We need to get local people to do that work.
Who better than to get the native Indian to go out on their reservation and do their counting and knock on doors? They are the ones who are going to trust their friends and neighbors. In some cases these people may be on some type of welfare-type benefit, a medicaid program or something like that and these are temporary jobs, only going to be around for a few months and so to get them to be able to work those jobs temporarily without losing those benefits would be very desirable.
So the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek) introduced legislation which, of course, I cosponsored and we passed yesterday, and I have to give credit to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek) for pushing this legislation, the Democrats.
There are a lot of people who have concerns about this because as the gentleman who is on the Committee on Ways and Means knows, welfare reform which was passed in 1996 gave the States the power. So the real problem we are having with this is, and the people are challenging us on it the most is, we are taking away power from the States. Let them decide. The States, I would assume, are willing to do it.
The question is, do we mandate it out of Washington? The fact is, the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek) did this, and I went along with it, we pushed it and luckily we got it and hopefully we can get it passed by the House. If not, we can get a sense of Congress to push it along and get the States to do it because it is good public policy and we should all agree that we want the local native Indians on their reservation. They do not want to go to the next reservation necessarily, and they are not going from their reservations to the Haitian community in Miami either. That is one good thing we hopefully will get out of this.
Mr. HAYWORTH. As we discovered in working with Native American groups and other concerned constituencies in the field hearings in Phoenix, we have many Indian communities. While some enjoy an economic boom and take advantage of new economic opportunities, I was meeting earlier today with a group of high school students who came to see me from the Close-up Foundation, from the Navajo Nation and understand, Mr. Speaker, that unemployment on the sovereign Navajo nation, an area in geographic size almost the size of the State of West Virginia, transcending the boundaries of four of our sovereign states, unemployment on the reservations can top and exceed 50 percent in some cases. So jobs, be they temporary, are welcome and indeed there would be a lot of people.
This is one of the topics we addressed today, what happens for economic empowerment because as we all know and as I remarked to the Navajo Tribal Council when I was honored to address that assembly in Window Rock, Arizona, the Navajo Nation capital, the greatest social program in the world is a job.
Mr. MILLER of Florida. Right.
Mr. HAYWORTH. To have this opportunity, I salute the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek) and while there may be some questions of jurisdiction and some details to iron out with the Nation's governors and the respective States and the whole notion of TATNF, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and what we are doing here, if we can vet those concerns and make a workable proposition come out, well, then this is to be welcomed. Let us seize on this aspect. Salute our colleague, the gentlewoman from Florida, from the other side of the aisle and say that example should be followed because it is inevitable that we may not agree on every jot and tittle of policy but that is the example of true bipartisanship, to work together to try to solve a problem, not to try a maneuver for political advantage or to say we are going to ignore the rulings of the Supreme Court and the Constitution somehow does not count. So my friend is right to give credit where credit is due and that should be an example of true bipartisanship and civility.
I look forward to working with the gentleman to try to iron out some of these problems of jurisdiction.
Mr. MILLER of Florida. I appreciate that. Our visit to Arizona was very enlightening because every area is different in this country. The gentleman's district is very different from the district of the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek), and again the gentleman's district is going to be very different from my district in southwest Florida where we have lots of retirees and beautiful beaches along the Gulf of Mexico and a different environment.
The gentleman has desert. We have beautiful beaches and mangroves and some swamps in our area, too. We have to be able to understand the diversity of our great country, and that applies to the census. I learned a lot, such as every Indian on the reservation does not have a mailbox. They do not have a street. The streets are not even named, as explained, in some areas. It is just dirt paths off into these reservations, but everybody needs to be counted.
There is no excuse for people not to be counted. People do not trust the Federal Government, as we well know. So we have got to build up trust in the system. Each of us, as leaders, we have to be part of that process but, of course, the administration in their procedures they are going through now are breaking down that trust factor.
We do share a common goal that we want everybody to be counted. There is the problem of the differential undercount and we should do everything we can, and that is the reason we have introduced legislation. I do not know why they would oppose making it available in languages for people that are undercounted. Why do they not want to let people that are blind and need braille make it available in braille? They say, no, it is too much trouble.
This is a huge effort. This is going to be $6 billion or so total being spent. It is a giant undertaking, and the bottom goal that we should all share, and I think we all do share, is get the best count possible. Every person living in this great country counts and we need to put the resources into it. This Republican Congress, for the past couple of years, has put more money and resources in the census than the President has asked. We are willing to put those resources in there because we want it done right, and that is so fundamental. The administration is just playing games.
Mr. HAYWORTH. It is interesting because it evokes another visit to the political dictionary and the lexicon of terms that we find in vogue in our Nation's capital. We hear a lot of talk about compassion. When we stop and think about it, Mr. Speaker, how best can we define compassion? We hear a lot of rhetoric on the left about it.
I think a lot of us would view compassion with two words; an attitude rather than a definition. True compassion means everybody counts. So if everybody counts, why not count everybody? Why not live up to the standards of our constitution in Article I Section 2? Why not follow the decision of our Supreme Court? Why not employ true compassion and make sure everybody counts by counting everybody?
Mr. MILLER of Florida. I completely agree. That is a great way, as we conclude this discussion this evening, to explain what we are really trying to accomplish, is just count everyone because everyone counts in this great country.
There is no excuse for somebody not being counted. We need to build trust with all segments of our population and commit the resources it takes to do that, because that magical date of April 1 of 2000 is when we need to get everybody counted, about 270 million people in this great country, a huge undertaking.
They say it is the largest nonmilitary undertaking and mobilization in American history that will be taking place next year and we need to put all the resources we can into it. I am looking forward to the complete count.
I appreciate the gentleman joining me here this evening to have a chance to discuss this critical issue.
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