Mike Thompson: “I commend and agree with my colleague on the Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Glenn, with regard to the purpose…”

“I commend and agree with my colleague on the Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Glenn, with regard to the purpose of the census and how important it is. I commend Senator Hollings and Senator Stevens for working out some language that will get us over this temporary hurdle and will not cause us to have to stop in midstream and make a decision today as to exactly what we ought to do, because I do not think anybody knows exactly what we ought to do right now. I do not think attention has been focused on this issue. We in the Governmental Affairs Committee, however, have been focused on it for a while. When I became chairman, we had a meeting on the staff level and started to engage the people at the Census Bureau and the Department of Commerce and explained to them what our intentions were in terms of having hearings and gathering information as to the right way to proceed. We have had two hearings, as Senator Hollings has pointed out, considering specifically these sampling issues that we are talking about, keeping in mind how important it is. It is important that people have confidence in this census. Clearly, we base a lot of things on it in terms of distribution of Federal moneys, academic research, and things of that nature that are dependent on it, and last, but not least, the apportionment for the House of Representatives.”