Sam Farr: “I rise to discuss this issue because it is indeed an issue that should have a lot more attention in this Nation at the…”

“I rise to discuss this issue because it is indeed an issue that should have a lot more attention in this Nation at the local level than it has been getting. The battle here in Washington seems to be a partisan battle. The battle of getting an accurate census is really a community-based value. Let me tell why. If you undercount California where one out of every 10 people in the United States lives, it has been estimated that just the 1990 census, what we did 10 years ago when there was no dispute about how to do it, that that undercount will cost California $2 billion. Why? Because the money is subvened back to the States based on population. So the census in 1990 missed 838,000 people living in California. That 838,000 people is larger than the individual populations of Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Vermont. So if you do not think that counting is important, then let us just eliminate those States from the count, because that is the amount of people that we are talking about. What that means is that in a single year California loses $197 million in Medicaid funding, that is funding for people with illnesses; $995,000 in adoption assistance, $1.8 million in child care and development, $3.6 million in prevention and treatment of substance abuse, $9.4 million in foster care, $4.7 million for rehabilitation services, the list goes on and on.…”