[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 107 (Monday, August 3, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H6883]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            DECENNIAL CENSUS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MILLER of Florida. Mr. Speaker, this week we will be debating the 
appropriation for the Year 2000 Decennial Census. The census is 
something that is required by our Constitution and is very fundamental 
to our entire democratic system of government, because most elected 
officials in America are dependent on an accurate census to be 
conducted.
  Unfortunately, the 2000 Census has become politically involved, 
because President Clinton has decided to radically change the way the 
census is conducted, and for the first time in the history of this 
country, going back to Jefferson when he conducted the first census, we 
are not going to attempt to count everyone.
  I think it would be helpful, as we begin this debate this week, to 
understand the Clinton budget plan and what is traditionally used where 
we count everybody in the census. Under the Clinton plan, as designed, 
and it is an interesting theory, questionnaires will be mailed out in 
the year April of 2000 and be mailed back in. The expectation is that 
we will get maybe 65 percent response rate, though that is in question 
because when the American people realize that we are not going to count 
everybody, that we are going to use polling and sampling, the response 
rate may be significantly affected. But let us hope they get a 65 
percent response rate.
  Then we do what is called a nonresponse follow-up. But what the 
Clinton plan is proposing is instead of trying to follow up on 
everybody in this country, they are going to automatically delete, not 
count, 10 percent of the population. So that means about 27 million 
people will not be included in the census. Let me repeat that. Mr. 
Speaker, 27 million people will not be included in the census under 
President Clinton's plan. He will only count up to 90 percent of the 
population and he will use cloning to create the mysterious 10 percent. 
He is going to clone 10 percent of the population, 10 percent of the 
population.
  Now, the 10 percent that is not counted is not the hard-to-count 
people. Some people say, oh, those are the hard-to-count people. These 
are a randomly-selected 10 percent where maybe people are on vacation, 
they are not in town or something, and they do not complete their 
questionnaire. So they are going to be potentially not counted. That is 
just not the right way to do that.

  So, Mr. Speaker, once they have cloned in that 10 percent of the 
population, they will then do what is called an ICM sample of 750,000 
households. The 750,000-household count will then be used to adjust the 
clone numbers to get what they think would be the right number.
  In 1990, they used something with only 150,000 households. This time 
they are going to take a sample five times larger, but they are going 
to do it in half the time. It is very unrealistic. In fact, the whole 
plan is extremely risky and is moving towards failure.
  The General Accounting Office and the Inspector General have both 
warned this is a high-risk plan and the risk of failure is very high.
  Now, let me go back to the way it has been done in the past where we 
make an effort to count everyone. In 1990, they sent out the 
questionnaire as they would propose this time in the year 2000, but 
this time the key is going to be the mailing lists. We realize that 
about 50 percent of the problem back in 1990 was the mailing list, and 
so the Census Bureau is putting new efforts and new ideas into doing 
that. In fact, there is $100 million of extra money to let the Census 
Bureau go out and verify the addresses. So we are going to do a better 
job to help address that part of the problem.
  There will be paid advertising this time around to help encourage the 
response rate and, hopefully, under full enumeration, we can do a 
second mailing of questionnaires and even get a higher response rate. 
Then, when we go to nonresponse follow-up, say we get a 65 percent rate 
or 70 percent, when we do the follow-up, we are going to try to count 
everybody, not try to delete 27 million and create them by cloning. We 
are going to go out and use whatever efforts we need and resources, and 
that means using administrative records.
  If we have an undercount of children, which we did have, let us work 
with the WIC program and the Medicaid program. There are ways to go 
about doing this. This is hard work. Let us also make it easier to use 
people from the local communities to participate in the program.
  Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek) has a proposal, 
which we are working with her on, to help support and to help people 
who say they are receiving food stamps or welfare benefits to not lose 
those benefits when they work part-time for the Census Bureau. So in 
the Haitian community in Miami, we want Haitians to go out to help 
count Haitians, and this makes it possible.
  So, there are a lot of things that can be done to improve upon the 
1990 census, but the important thing is let us count everybody, because 
everyone counts. It is just plain wrong to not count 27 million people, 
and say we have all of these big fancy computers with all of these 
academic intellectuals up here who know how to clone people and create 
a virtual population of America. It is just not right.
  We need to work this in a bipartisan fashion. We do not need a 
Democratic census. We do not need a Republican census. We need an 
American census. I hope when we debate the Mollohan amendment, we 
realize that the right way to do this is to work together to count all 
Americans.

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