[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 89 (Monday, June 23, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1296-E1297]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


            CENSUS SHOULD BE CONDUCTED IN PROPER PERSPECTIVE

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                           HON. NEWT GINGRICH

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, June 23, 1997

  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, the attached editorial from the Washington 
Times puts the issue of how the 2000 census should be conducted in 
proper perspective. Considering how many administration departments 
have been politicized, we cannot risk having possibly millions of 
Americans disenfranchised because of census sampling. I submit the 
editorial into the Congressional Record.

               [From the Washington Times, June 12, 1997]

                      Politics and Census Numbers

       After the fiasco involving the Clinton administration's 
     utter politicization of the Immigration and Naturalization 
     Service's last-minute, pre-election blitz last year to 
     enfranchise felons and other likely Democratic-voting 
     immigrants, is there really any wonder why Republicans fear 
     approving this crowd's use of sampling for the 2000 census?

[[Page E1297]]

     Sadly, New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg was not 
     stretching it a bit when he questioned whether Dick Morris 
     would have a role in any population sampling conducted by 
     this administration.
       Having politicized everything in sight, from the White 
     House Travel Office to international trade missions at the 
     Commerce Department (which, by the way, also oversees the 
     Census Bureau), President Clinton now criticizes the 
     Republican Congress for ``weighing [the disaster-relief bill] 
     down with a political wish list.'' One provision that upsets 
     Mr. Clinton would prohibit the Census Bureau from employing 
     statistical sampling techniques to adjust the 2000 census, 
     which, among other things, would be used to determine the 
     population of states for the purpose of apportioning 
     congressional seats and distributing federal dollars. For the 
     first time ever, the Clinton administration wants to use 
     sampling to adjust the ``actual enumeration'' that the Census 
     Bureau obtains in 2000 from mail-in forms and subsequent 
     door-to-door data collections, proposing only to count 90 
     percent of the population and apply statistical projection to 
     the remaining 10 percent.
       Everybody agrees that the census is not accurate. 
     Supplemental research after the 1990 census revealed that 
     about four million people, 1.6 percent of the U.S. 
     population, were not counted. According to that sample, 2.3 
     percent of Asian-Americans (173,000), 4.4 percent of blacks 
     (1.40 million), 4.5 percent of Native Americans (96,000), 5 
     percent of Hispanics (1.16 million) and 0.7 percent of non-
     Hispanic whites (1.33 million) were not counted in 1990. 
     Contrary to popular belief, however, undercounting is as 
     prevalent in rural areas as it is in urban areas. The Clinton 
     administration, backed by the American Statistical 
     Association, the Association of American Geographers and the 
     National Academy of Sciences, argues that the use of sampling 
     would produce the most accurate, cost-efficient census. Even 
     the Census Bureau admits, however, that introducing sampling 
     may simply substitute one type of error for another.
       Moreover, even if sampling is more accurate, it addresses 
     neither the political question nor the constitutional 
     question. Politically, potentially two dozen House seats lie 
     in the balance--meaning, for all practical purposes, 
     majority control of the House, its agenda and all the 
     committee and subcommittee chairmanships. Why should a 
     Republican Congress commit political suicide by 
     relinquishing its authority over the census to a hyper-
     politicized administration that has treated the Census 
     Bureau's parent, the Commerce Department, as the 
     Democratic National Committee's (DNC) soft-money 
     subsidiary? The fact is that the Secretary of Commerce 
     office has been occupied for five years by a who's who of 
     Democratic fund-raisers: former DNC Chairman Ron Brown, 
     California money maven Mickey Kantor and Chicago rainmaker 
     William Daley. Looking for a place to stuff the likes of 
     John Huang, Mr. Clinton appropriately selected Commerce.
       This is hardly idle speculation. As the nonpartisan 
     Statistical Assessment Service observed recently, ``[O]nce 
     the sampling precedent is set, what is to prevent us, in 
     principle, from lowering the actual enumeration from 90 
     percent to 80 percent or 70 percent or lower? . . . This 
     creates a powerful temptation for the party in power to skew 
     the sampling adjustment its way. The ability to `create' or 
     `eliminate' millions of strategically placed citizens with 
     the stroke of a pen introduces a potent and disturbing new 
     political weapon . . . and a dangerous new set of political 
     temptation.''
       Constitutionally, the Supreme Court only last year 
     (Department of Commerce v. City of New York et al.) confirmed 
     that the Constitution confers wide authority and discretion 
     upon Congress in conducting the census. The Court unanimously 
     ruled that former Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher, by 
     virtue of authority delegated to him by Congress, properly 
     refused to adjust the 1990 census to correct its undercount. 
     Interestingly, the Clinton administration argued on behalf of 
     Mr. Mosbacher's use of the authority Congress had delegated 
     to him. Now, Congress merely seeks to exercise its authority. 
     Moreover, it is by no means certain that the Supreme Court 
     would permit a census to be adjusted by sampling. The 
     Constitution mandates an ``actual Enumeration,'' and last 
     year's Supreme Court decision did not address this issue. As 
     a practical matter, any cost savings from sampling would be 
     overwhelmed by a Supreme Court decision rejecting the 
     practice.
       If the Clinton administration has demonstrated it cannot be 
     trusted to process citizenship applications of immigrants 
     properly--heretofore a very nonpolitical undertaking--how can 
     it be remotely trusted not to politicize ``a potent and 
     disturbing new political weapon''?

     

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