Hal Rogers

Mr. ROGERS

Mr. ROGERS. I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas.

Mr. ROGERS. I yield to the gentleman from Montana.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns).

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for bringing these very important matters to our attention. I would be happy to work with the gentleman and other interested Members to try to address their concerns as we move into the conference with the Senate on this bill.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, the proposal is that the debate be concluded in 30 minutes, divided 15 a side, the gentleman from Ohio controlling his side, the gentleman from Arizona controlling this side.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, in the interest of trying to preserve time and preserve everyone's right to speak I think we have general agreement on limiting time. I would like to, with that in mind, propose a unanimous consent that all debate on the amendment be completed after 30 minutes equally divided between the two sides, the gentleman from Ohio controlling his side, the gentleman from Arizona, on the committee, controlling the other side.

Mr. ROGERS

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis), a member of the Subcommittee on Census. (Mr. DAVIS of Virginia asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg).

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder).

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Petri). (Mr. PETRI asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), chairman of the Committee on House Oversight. (Mr. THOMAS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts).

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Snowbarger).

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, does the gentleman also know that the Federal statute says, ``Except for the determination of population for purposes of apportionment of Representatives in Congress among the several States, the Secretary shall, if he considers it feasible, authorize the use of the statistical method known as `sampling'?'' but otherwise prohibited. ``Except for the apportionment of the House'' is in the Federal statute passed by the U.S. Congress. Is the gentleman aware of this statute?

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes and 30 seconds to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg), a member of the committee.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham), a very able and hard-working member of the subcommittee.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the remainder of the bill, through page 124, line 2, be considered as read, printed in the Record and open to amendment at any point.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, Members are asking about whether or not we will postpone this vote. The answer is we will recommend the vote be postponed until at least 8 p.m.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, there are Members who wish the 5-minute discussion time. I would again request unanimous consent for 5 minutes per side, after which we vote, and then roll the vote until after 8 p.m.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 7 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller), the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Census, who happens to also be a doctor in statistics and marketing, and taught for the MBA program at his university, who is an expert on this topic.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 9 minutes. Mr. Chairman, let me start by reminding the Members what this bill does with respect to the decennial census and why. Last year on this bill the Congress and the White House agreed to disagree on whether the census would be conducted using a hard count or using an untested and legally questionable method known as sampling. My colleague always refers to it as scientific sampling. It is sort of like a toothpaste or patent medicine, scientifically proven to prevent cavities and so forth, all this scientific sampling, as we hear. So there is a temporary agreement between the President and the Speaker of the House, and what did it say? The agreement said, ``We will hold off on a final decision on whether or not to use sampling until the spring of 1999.'' At that time it was agreed that Congress and the White House would elect the method of counting in time for the Census Bureau to finish its final plans for the Year 2000 count. What did we agree would occur in the meantime? One, we agreed to test each method using dress rehearsals in three cities this year; it is going on right now. Two, the parties on each side would have the opportunity to test the legality and constitutionality of sampling in the federal courts in an expedited fashion. The Supreme Court has never ruled on this question, and those cases, by the way, are now going on. Three, we would appoint a bipartisan census monitoring board to oversee all aspects of the decennial census, as is being planned and carried out. That monitoring board now is in session, is meeting regularly. That, in essence, was the agreement, the President and the Speaker: Let us have a cooling-off period, let us proceed with plans to use both methods, let us let the courts rule as they may with a D-Day of next spring to make the final decision when hopefully all three of those conditions would have matured. So what does the bill do that we drafted? My colleagues, it simply implements the agreement the President wanted us to do. We provide a total of $956 million to fund preparations for the Census. That is $566 million over current spending. We added $107 million on top of what the President requested in order to have the staff and resources that the Bureau later admitted it needed to be fully prepared regardless of which method they eventually settled upon. So, we gave them more money than they asked for so they can prepare for both practices. We allow the first half of the money in the bill, $475 million, to be spent immediately so that necessary census preparations can continue through March 31, 1999. This is pursuant to the agreement the President asked us to do. Second, we provide the second half of the money, $475 million, once a final decision on a counting method is agreed to by the Congress and the administration as they agreed last year to do. To ensure that the Congress and the administration reach an agreement the bill requires the following: By March 15, 1999, the President must request the funds that he needs to be released and must tell Congress how much the census at that time will cost, after we have heard the court, hopefully, after we have heard the monitoring board, hopefully, and after the dress rehearsals in three cities around the country have been completed. The Congress must enact, and the President must sign, a bill to release the money, and the bill states that Congress shall act on the President's request by March 31. We bind ourselves. Submit the request to us by March 15, 1999, we guarantee we will act on that request 2 weeks later, by March 31, and off we go doing the census. We have done everything in this bill we can, Mr. Chairman, to facilitate, to live up to the agreement the President asked us to do last year. It is all there, plus some. The Mollohan amendment on the other hand would strike the very provisions in the bill that the President asked us to put in the bill last year and instead gives the administration complete authority over how the Census is conducted contrary to the Constitution and the Federal statutes which give the Congress control over how the census is conducted. Neither his amendment, nor the administration which now supports it, seeks to live up to the agreement of last year. They are abandoning the agreement the President solemnly committed to last year. In fact, the administration supports something far more destructive than the amendment the gentleman from West Virginia is advocating, advocating a complete cutoff of funds for every other agency in this bill next spring until we agree to use sampling, as he wants to in the Census. Yes, this President says: ``Oh no, don't give us half the money for the Census and fund all the other agencies in this bill all the whole year. Cut off all the agencies along with the Census in March,'' the President says, ``and let's shut down the Drug Enforcement Administration, let's shut down the FBI and the War on Drugs and the War on Crime, let's shut down the State Department around the world and all of the sensitive things that are going on around the world in America's national security interests.'' ``Let us shut down the Federal courts, the Supreme Court, all the way through to the U.S. Marshal's Office. Shut them all down,'' he says. ``Let us shut down the Commerce Department. Let us shut down the National Weather Service. Let us shut down all of the institutions in the Commerce Department, the NOAA, the Small Business Administration, all of the agencies that help Americans live a better life.'' The President says, ``Let us shut them all down so that I can have my way on sampling in the census.'' He says, ``Trust me. Trust me, just as you trusted me with the FBI files, and I pilfered through them. Trust me on this.'' He says, ``Trust me, even though we may have naturalized tens of thousands of felons so they could vote in the election of 1996. We gave away America's most precious gift, American citizenship, for the vote, but trust me.'' That is what this amendment would do, Mr. Chairman. Could it be that the administration is afraid that this radical plan for polling instead of counting in the 2000 Census, that he knows it cannot be held up to public or Congressional scrutiny? I can certainly see where they might be nervous, given that the last attempt they had to use statistical sampling in the 1990 census was an absolute failure. In the 1990 census the experts in 1990 pushed to statistically manipulate the statistical count. The Secretary of Commerce refused, because he thought it might be wrong. Guess who was right? Ask the people of Pennsylvania, for example, who would have lost a congressman in this House if the experts had prevailed last time, as they want to do this time. To be fair, the administration and the experts assure us that this time it will be different, just trust us. They say that the bugs have been removed from statistical sampling. Not so, says the GAO, and the Commerce Department's own Inspector General, in fact, both have said that every major component of the Census Bureau's 2000 census plan is at risk for quality problems and cost and growth. Even more disturbing, they both raise serious questions about how the Census Bureau plans to use a statistical manipulation of the census count. The IG says it is long, complex, and operating under such a tight time schedule that there will be many opportunities for operational and statistical errors. The GAO said ``The Bureau has made several misssteps in drawing the statistical sample because these errors went undetected until relatively late. GAO is concerned about the Bureau's ability to catch and correct problems.'' In fact, the title of the GAO report says it all: ``Preparations for the Dress Rehearsal Leave Many Unanswered Questions.'' That is what GAO titles their report. Maybe that is why the administration no longer wants to wait until next spring to work with the Congress on a final decision. Or maybe it is because the administration is afraid the courts will rule sampling to be illegal or unconstitutional. That would explain why the Administration's own lawyers have been fighting vigorously in Federal court to get the pending lawsuits thrown out on procedural grounds, so that the courts will not rule on the merits of this issue in time for next spring's decision. Mr. Chairman, I tell my colleagues, make no mistake about it, if the Mollohan amendment is adopted, the very success of the 2000 Census is in jeopardy for the first time in America's history. If the Mollohan amendment is adopted, the Congress will have no say in the conduct of the census, contrary to the Constitution. We will not get to make a decision based on the dress rehearsal results or the reports from the bipartisan, independent Census Monitoring Board. We will not get to make a decision based on the court rulings. In fact, we will not make a decision at all. Instead, the Mollohan amendment asks us to trust the Clinton White House; defer to the same Clinton administration which pilfered through the FBI confidential files, which naturalized thousands of felons so they could vote; the most investigated administration in the history of the country; they say, trust us again. Mr. Chairman, there is an old saying back in Kentucky, ``There ain't no education in the second kick of the mule.'' We have learned a bit about this White House. ``Trust us,'' they say. We say, ``Okay, we will trust you, but we are going to verify. We are going to verify with an actual count. We do not trust you to guess on the numbers of people in the country for the purposes of deciding who can represent us in this Congress.'' That is all we are saying. They may sample if they will on the number of people with blue eyes, but actually count the people when it comes to making up this body that represents all the American people for all that is in the Constitution. The American people have a right to expect that this Congress will ensure the integrity of the very process that determines the nature of their representation in the House. For that reason, Mr. Chairman, I urge the House to live up to the agreement we reached with the White House. I urge the White House to live up to the agreement they reached with us, and vote down the Mollohan amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan).

Mr. ROGERS

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on the further consideration of the bill, H.R. 4276, and that I may include tabular and extraneous material.