[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 19 (Wednesday, February 3, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H400-H401]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            DECENNIAL CENSUS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MILLER of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address the issue 
of the upcoming decennial census which is just 13 months away. A year 
from next month, the forms will be going into the mail, tens of 
millions of them, all across America to count everyone. We need to do 
the best job we can, without politics, to get everyone counted.
  Sadly, this administration has proposed a historic change. Because 
for every census since Thomas Jefferson in 1790, we have attempted to 
count everyone, but this administration has wanted to use polling 
techniques in order to say, ``We don't need to count everyone. Let me 
just guesstimate at the numbers.''
  Fortunately last week the Supreme Court finally said, ``No, you've 
got to count.'' The actual enumeration as stated in the Constitution is 
the law of the land. We need to count everyone for purposes of 
apportionment.
  Sadly, this administration does not want to listen to the courts. 
They have got this idea now that they want to have a two-number census. 
What they are proposing is, we will have a set of numbers provided that 
the Supreme Court says are the legal numbers, and then the Clinton 
Administration wants to adjust these numbers and have a Clinton set of 
numbers. And so for every city and county in this great country we are 
going to have two sets of numbers, a Supreme Court set of numbers and 
the Clinton numbers.
  We have enough cynicism and doubts in this country, and we need to 
have trust in our government. We do not need to create the confusion of 
two sets of numbers. The Census Bureau and the professionals at least 
in the past have argued against two sets of numbers. Hopefully they 
will stand by their principles and say two sets of numbers are wrong, 
because we can only have one set of numbers. It is what is required by 
law and that is what the Supreme Court has ruled.
  To do the census is difficult work. It is hard work. It costs a lot 
of money. Because we only do it once every 10 years, we need to 
concentrate all of our efforts into doing the best census possible. 
Because if we try to do two censuses, we are going to have two failed 
censuses, and that is wrong for America.
  Can my colleagues just imagine every community having the choice of 
two numbers? This is a lawyer's dream. In fact, Justice Scalia at the 
oral arguments of the Supreme Court last November said, ``Are we going 
to be creating a whole new area of census law?'' That is exactly what 
could happen with a two-number census.
  What we need to do, as I proposed last week to the Conference of 
Mayors, is a proposal to put all the resources we can and all the 
actions that this Congress can provide to get the best census possible. 
Everybody should be counted. I have proposed a series of provisions, 
from increasing the amount of paid advertising from $100 million to 
$400 million, from the idea that we will need another 100,000 more 
enumerators to get the job done right.
  Yes, we are proposing to increase the spending on the census in order 
to get the best census possible that is trusted by the American people. 
Why not use AmeriCorps? I have doubts that we need AmeriCorps, but a 
Republican advocating using AmeriCorps for the census I think is rather 
significant.
  Something else that we are proposing is something called the post-
census local review. I think almost every mayor and county commissioner 
in this country will support this. It was used in the 1990 census. What 
it is is that after the Census Bureau gets their numbers, they are sent 
back to the local communities to evaluate, to in effect conduct an 
audit and to see if there is something missing. If there is, they can 
raise the issue with the Census Bureau and then the Census Bureau will 
adjust the numbers if those challenges and questions are correctly 
adjusted.

  Why not, to build trust in our census, allow communities a chance to 
review the numbers before they become official? What are the Census 
Bureau and the administration afraid of, trusting our local officials 
like we did in 1990 to have a chance to review it before it becomes 
official?
  I also propose that we work together with the gentlewoman from 
Florida (Mrs. Meek) on legislation to make it available, for example, 
that welfare workers or retired officers have the right without losing 
their benefits to work temporarily for the Census Bureau. We want to 
get local people involved in the Census.
  I have held hearings of the Subcommittee on Census in Miami, and

[[Page H401]]

most recently in Phoenix where we met with American Indians, getting 
the input and ideas of how do we address the issue. What we have found 
out over and over is we need local people involved in the process. We 
need local advertising that targets the local community as best we can.
  We can conduct a good census and get the best census ever. But if we 
are going to play games with this administration and say we are going 
to have two censuses, which is illegal, we are going to waste our 
efforts and have two failed censuses. Let us work together and get the 
best census possible.

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