[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 19 (Wednesday, February 3, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1171-S1173]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. MOYNIHAN (for himself and Mr. Bingaman):
  S. 355. A bill to amend title 13, United States Code, to eliminate 
the provision that prevents sampling from being used in determining the 
population for purposes of the apportionment of Representatives in 
Congress among the several States; to the Committee on Government 
Affairs.


                a just apportionment for all states act

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce, along with my 
friend and colleague, Senator Bingaman, a bill to allow the use of 
sampling in determining the populations of the states for use in 
reapportionment. The Supreme Court has ruled that the 1976 amendments 
to the Census Act do not permit sampling in determining these 
populations. We believe sampling is vital to achieving the goal of the 
most accurate census possible, and to a fair and accurate 
redistricting.
  The Bureau of the Census proposes to count each census tract by mail 
and then by sending out enumerators until they have responses for 90 
percent of the addresses. The Bureau proposes to then use sampling to 
infer who lives at the remaining ten percent of addresses in each tract 
based on what they know of the 90 percent. This would provide a more 
accurate census then we get by repeatedly sending enumerators to hard-
to-count locations and would save $500 million or more in personnel 
costs.
  The Census plan is supported by the National Academy of Sciences' 
National Research Council, which was directed by Congress in 1992 to 
study ways to achieve the most accurate population count possible. The 
NRC report finds that the Bureau should ``make a good faith effort to 
count everyone, but then truncate physical enumeration after a 
reasonable effort to reach nonrespondents. The number and character of 
the remaining nonrespondents should then be estimated through 
sampling.''
  Mr. President, the taking of a census goes back centuries. I quote 
from the King James version of the Bible, chapter two of Luke: ``And it 
came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar 
Augustus that all the world should be taxed (or enrolled, according to 
the footnote) * * * And all went to be taxed, everyone into his own 
city.'' The early censuses were taken to enable the rule or ruling 
government to tax or raise an army.

  The first census for more sociological reasons was taken in 
Nuremberg, in 1449. So it was not a new idea to the Founding Fathers 
when they wrote it into the Constitution to facilitate fair taxation 
and accurate apportionment of the House of Representatives, the latter 
of which was the foundation of the Great Compromise that has served us 
well ever since.
  The Constitution says in Article I, Section 2:

       Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among 
     the several States which may be included within this Union, 
     according to their respective numbers, which shall be 
     determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, 
     including those bound to Service for a term of years, and 
     excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other 
     persons. The actual enumeration shall be made within three 
     years of the first meeting of the Congress of the United 
     States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in 
     such manner as they shall direct by law.

  Those who cite this as saying the Constitution requires an ``actual 
enumeration'' should consider whether the phrase is being taken out of 
context. The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the constitutionality 
of sampling. Rather the Court has ruled on the census laws last amended 
in 1976.
  I also note that we have not taken an ``actual enumeration'' the way 
the Founding Fathers envisioned since 1960, after which enumerators 
going to every door were replaced with mail-in responses. The 
Constitution provides for a postal system, but did not direct that the 
census be taken by mail. Yet we do it that way. Why not sample if that 
is a further improvement?
  Sampling would go far toward correcting one of the most serious flaws 
in the census, the undercount. Statistical work in the 1940's 
demonstrated that we can estimate how many people the census misses. 
The estimate for 1940 was 5.4 percent of the population. After 
decreasing steadily to 1.2 percent in 1980, the 1990 undercount 
increased to 1.8 percent, or more than four million people.
  More significantly, the undercount is not distributed evenly. The 
differential undercount, as it is known, of minorities was 5.7 percent 
for Blacks, 5.0 percent for Hispanics, 2.3 percent for Asian-Pacific 
Islanders, and 4.5 percent for Native Americans, compared with 1.2 
percent for non-Hispanic whites. The difference between the black and 
non-black undercount was the largest since 1940. By disproportionately 
missing minorities, we deprive them of equal representation in Congress 
and of proportionate funding from Federal programs based on population. 
The Census Bureau estimates that the total undercount will reach 1.9 
percent in 2000 if the 1990 methods are used instead of sampling.
  Mr. President, I have some history with the undercount issue. In 1966 
when I became Director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies at MIT and 
Harvard, I asked Professor David Heer to work with me in planning a 
conference to publicize the non-white undercount in the 1960 census and 
to foster concern about the problems of obtaining a full enumeration, 
especially of the urban poor. I ask unanimous consent that my foreword 
to the report from that conference be printed in the Record, for it is, 
save for some small numerical changes, disturbingly still relevant. 
Sampling is the key to the problem and we must proceed with it so that 
we have one accurate census count for all purposes, all uses. I also 
ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the 
Record and I hope my colleagues will support it.

[[Page S1172]]

  There being no objection, the items were ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                 S. 355

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``A Just Apportionment for All 
     States Act''.

     SEC. 2. USE OF SAMPLING.

       Section 195 of title 13, United States Code, is amended by 
     striking ``Except for the determination of population for 
     purposes of apportionment of Representatives in Congress 
     among the several States, the'' and inserting ``The''.
                                  ____


                     Social Statistics and the City

                           (By David M. Heer)


                                FOREWORD

       At one point in the course of the 1950's John Kenneth 
     Galbraith observed that it is the statisticians, as much as 
     any single group, who shape public policy, for the simple 
     reason that societies never really become effectively 
     concerned with social problems until they learn to measure 
     them. An unassuming truth, perhaps, but a mighty one, and one 
     that did more than he may know to sustain morale in a number 
     of Washington bureaucracies (hateful word!) during a period 
     when the relevant cabinet officers had on their own reached 
     very much the same conclusion--and distrusted their charges 
     all the more in consequence. For it is one of the ironies of 
     American government that individuals and groups that have 
     been most resistant to liberal social change have quite 
     accurately perceived that social statistics are all too 
     readily transformed into political dynamite, whilst in a 
     curious way the reform temperament has tended to view the 
     whole statistical process as plodding, overcautious, and 
     somehow a brake on progress. (Why must every statistic be 
     accompanied by detailed notes about the size of the 
     ``standard error''?)
       The answer, of course, is that this is what must be done if 
     the fact is to be accurately stated, and ultimately accepted. 
     But, given this atmosphere of suspicion on the one hand and 
     impatience on the other, it is something of a wonder that the 
     statistical officers of the federal government have with 
     such fortitude and fairness remained faithful to a high 
     intellectual calling, and an even more demanding public 
     trust.
       There is no agency of which this is more true than the 
     Bureau of the Census, the first, still the most important, 
     information-gathering agency of the federal government. For 
     getting on, now, for two centuries, the Census has collected 
     and compiled the essential facts of the American experience. 
     Of late the ten-year cycle has begun to modulate somewhat, 
     and as more an more current reports have been forthcoming, 
     the Census has been quietly transforming itself into a 
     continuously flowing source of information about the American 
     people. In turn, American society has become more and more 
     dependent on it. It would be difficult to find an aspect of 
     public or private life not touched and somehow shaped by 
     Census information. And yet for all this, it is somehow 
     ignored. To declare that the Census is without friends would 
     be absurd. But partisans? When Census appropriations are cut, 
     who bleeds on Capitol Hill or in the Executive Office of the 
     President? The answer is almost everyone in general, and 
     therefore no one in particular. But the result, too often, is 
     the neglect, even the abuse, of an indispensable public 
     institution, which often of late has served better than it 
     has been served.
       The papers in this collection, as Professor Heer's 
     introduction explains, were presented at a conference held in 
     June 1976 with the avowed purpose of arousing a measure of 
     public concern about the difficulties encountered by the 
     Census in obtaining a full count of the urban poor, 
     especially perhaps the Negro poor. It became apparent, for 
     example, that in 1960 one fifth of nonwhite males aged 25-29 
     had in effect disappeared and had been left out of the Census 
     count altogether. Invisible men. Altogether, one tenth of the 
     nonwhite population had been ``missed.'' The ramifications of 
     this fact were considerable, and its implications will 
     suggest themselves immediately. It was hoped that a public 
     airing of the issue might lead to greater public support to 
     ensure that the Census would have the resources in 1970 to do 
     what is, after all, its fundamental job, that of counting all 
     the American people. As the reader will see, the scholarly 
     case for providing this support was made with considerable 
     energy and candor. But perhaps the most compelling argument 
     arose from a chance remark by a conference participant to the 
     effect that if the decennial census were not required by the 
     Constitution, the Bureau would doubtless never have survived 
     the economy drives of the nineteenth century. The thought 
     flashed: the full enumeration of the American population is 
     not simply an optional public service provided by government 
     for the use of sales managers, sociologists, and regional 
     planners. It is, rather, the constitutionally mandated 
     process whereby political representation in the Congress is 
     distributed as between different areas of the nation. It is a 
     matter not of convenience but of the highest seriousness, 
     affecting the very foundations of sovereignty. That being the 
     case, there is no lawful course but to provide the Bureau 
     with whatever resources are necessary to obtain a full 
     enumeration. Inasmuch as Negroes and other ``minorities'' are 
     concentrated in specific urban locations, to undercount 
     significantly the population in those areas is to deny 
     residents their rights under Article I, Section 3 of the 
     Constitution, as well, no doubt, as under Section 1 of the 
     Fourteenth Amendment. Given the further, more recent practice 
     of distributing federal, state, and local categorical aid on 
     the basis not only of the number but also social and economic 
     characteristics of local populations, the constitutional case 
     for full enumeration would seem to be further strengthened.
       A sound legal case? Others will judge; and possibly one day 
     the courts will decide. But of one thing the conference had 
     no doubt: the common-sense case is irrefutable. America needs 
     to count all its people. (And reciprocally, all its people 
     need to make themselves available to be counted.) But if the 
     legal case adds any strength to the common-sense argument, it 
     remains only to add that should either of the arguments bring 
     some improvement in the future, ti will be but another 
     instance of the generosity of the Carnegie Corporation, which 
     provided funds for the conference and for this publication.

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to speak in support of this 
important legislation being introduced today by my friend from New 
York, Senator Moynihan. This bill turns into law what we all recognize 
is the only practical way to count our citizens in the decennial 
census. There is no question--the science is unequivocal--sampling is 
the only way to assure an accurate census.
  Not only does sampling provide a better census, it costs less than 
all other alternative methods--as much as $3 billion less. What could 
be clearer? Sampling gives a better answer at a lower cost. This bill 
ought to pass the Senate unanimously.
  Mr. President, the Constitution says the census shall be conducted in 
a manner that Congress shall by law direct. The recent Supreme Court 
case found that under the current law sampling may be used for all 
aspects of the census except for the decision on how many 
representatives each state will have. In fact, current law says 
sampling shall be used for every other purpose of the census.
  My state now has three House members and that number isn't going to 
change after this census one way or the other. However, we now know New 
Mexico had the second highest undercount rate in the 1990 census--3.1 
percent, or nearly 50,000 New Mexicans were simply left out, including 
20,000 children. Among New Mexico's native American community, the 
undercount rate was an astounding 9 percent. This undercount is 
literally costing New Mexico millions of dollars every year.
  In Albuquerque, our largest city, 12,000 men, women, and children 
were left out. Nationwide, 4 million Americans were not accounted for.
  Mr. President, this massive undercount is unacceptable to New Mexico 
and should be unacceptable to every Senator, especially when the Census 
Bureau has a solution that is tried, tested, and reliable. I believe 
every citizen counts, and every citizen should be counted.
  Federal funding for education, transportation, crime prevention and 
other priorities is allocated to states based on population. The 
majority of people overlooked in the past census are poor, the very 
citizens we must assure are not being left out. If the existing 
undercount is repeated in future censuses, New Mexico will again be 
denied its fair share of critical federal funds.
  Under current law we can have a two-number census, one without 
sampling for apportionment and one with sampling for all other 
purposes. I can appreciate why some people don't want a two-number 
census. The country would be better served with only a single-number 
census as long as it's the best number the Census Bureau can come up 
with. However, some in Congress would use the appropriations process to 
stymie the census.
  Mr. President, the census is done only once per decade, it is too 
important to decide this issue as part of the annual appropriation 
process. This bill will assure that the Census Bureau has available the 
very best tools for this important task. Science-based sampling is the 
only way to give America the quality we demand in our census. It is 
inconceivable to me that anyone would support a second-rate census.
  I am pleased to support this bill, and I hope the Senate will take 
prompt action on it. I also urge the House to move forward quickly to 
pass this important legislation. I thank Mr. Moynihan for his efforts.

[[Page S1173]]

                                 ______