[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 29 (Wednesday, March 15, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H1063-H1064]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CENSUS 2000

  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 respond to some 
of the comments by some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
concerning the upcoming 2000 Census. The census forms are in the mail, 
and people should have received them by now or will receive them 
shortly. Please complete those forms. I think, unfortunately, my 
colleagues tried to make it feel that it was not necessary to complete 
the forms, because only statistical sampling should be used or 
something. That was settled by the Supreme Court last year.
  The important thing now is to complete the forms. We need to get 
everybody counted. Everybody living in this

[[Page H1064]]

great country needs to be counted, and there is no excuse not to fill 
out your form. If you do not fill out your form, it costs the 
Government more to collect the data, it hurts your local community, and 
there is nothing to be gained by not completing that form, and I am 
saddened that my colleagues gave the impression that the Republicans do 
not want to count people. That is so sad that we have to stoop to that 
level of politics to say that we are not interested in counting people. 
That is so, so unfortunate. Because we are doing so much more this year 
to try to get everybody counted.
  I am really pleased with what the Census Bureau is doing on a lot of 
important things to get the undercounted population raised up so that 
they are fully counted. In fact, this census cost 150 percent more than 
1990. We spent less than $3 billion in 1990, and we are going to spend 
almost $7 billion; and we have given every penny that the Census Bureau 
has asked for.
  Now, I know my colleagues say oh, let the professionals at the Census 
Bureau do it. The professionals know what to do. Let us look at the 
first major thing the Census Bureau did in sending out a 
prenotification letter that was just received last week by 120 million 
people in this country. Well, what happened with that letter? 120 
million were sent out and guess what? All 120 million were misaddressed 
by the Census Bureau. That is the largest mass mailing mistake in 
history. Mr. Speaker, 120 million mistake, because one digit was added 
to everyone's address. These are the professionals that do not make 
mistakes.
  Then this form letter has a return envelope. It explains that the 
form is coming in the mail and on the back it gives a chance if you 
want it in five different languages. Unfortunately, for the large 
number of people who just speak English, they do not understand what it 
was all about because it never explained in English why the letter was 
coming. So the Census Bureau is getting all of these questions, being 
tied up with phone calls, why are we getting this letter. I do not 
understand what it is all about. They forget to put it in English.
  I am also glad that my colleague from New York put up the phone 
number to call, because we do need to work in the local census offices. 
Because the Census Bureau in their letter, instead of giving the 
number, what they gave is call directory assistance. Well, that is 
nice. That only costs 50 cents, whatever it is, in your particular 
phone provider area, but they did not even have the ability to put down 
the phone number.

                              {time}  1800

  Now these professionals have botched the first big job. I want to 
make sure we have everybody counted, so I am saying that these mistakes 
were unfortunate, it is embarrassing for the Bureau, and we need to do 
everything we can to get everybody counted.
  Now they say that Governor Bush will not release another set of 
numbers. First of all, the Supreme Court has ruled. The Supreme Court 
ruled last January, a year ago January, and said we cannot use these 
statistically-adjusted numbers. I am a former statistics professor. We 
have a lot of use for sampling and adjustments, but the court has 
ruled, so stop going on about that issue.
  They tried this in 1990. They did something called the PES, similar 
to what is called the ACE this time. It was a failure. What they did 
was they did a full count and then they tried to adjust it and get a 
second set of numbers.
  When they came up with the second set of numbers, they were not 
reliable. They played around with them for 2 years and they never used 
them. They still have never found a use for those numbers because it 
did not work.
  To say, oh, we are going to have this adjusted set of numbers and 
they are going to be great, the statisticians will even tell us they 
are not sure it is going to work. They are going to take a sample of 
300,000 and adjust the entire population, the 270 million people in 
this country, based on that 300,000 sample.
  What we are working with in this is what is called census blocks, 
with maybe 25 people in them. It is a very complicated process. Here is 
a Census Bureau that cannot even send a letter out to tell us about the 
other matter straight. They botched it three different ways. And they 
are going to have the ability to do this extremely complicated 
experiment in statistics and get it right? I am really concerned about 
it.
  Governor Bush is right to say, let us see what we can come up with. I 
do not think it is going to work. I feel very confident the Supreme 
Court is going to rule it is illegal and unconstitutional. In that 
case, we only have this set of numbers.
  So please, everybody should complete their form. That is the best 
record we have. Everybody please complete their form, whether they get 
a short or long form. One out of every six people get the long form. I 
know there are a lot of questions on there, but we really need to get 
the best Census possible this year.

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