Jeff Miller: “we are less than 2 years from the beginning of the decennial census. The decennial census is a requirement of our…”

“we are less than 2 years from the beginning of the decennial census. The decennial census is a requirement of our Constitution where we count everybody living in America every 10 years. Since 1970 we have been doing it, and we are gearing up now for the 2000 census. It is one of the most important and controversial issues faced in public policy today. It is controversial because, for the first time in history, the Clinton administration has proposed a radically different approach to be conducting the census. They have proposed this radical change without the approval of Congress. For the first time in history since 1790, for the first time, they do not want to count everybody. They only want to count some of the people and guess at the rest of them. They want to use science to come up with estimates of a population, rather than actually counting people, the hard work of counting people. From the days of Jefferson and Washington, we have been counting the population. Now they have come up with this radical idea. It is a very important issue because it is fundamental to our democratic system of government, because most elected officials in this country are dependent upon an accurate census, and hundreds of billions of dollars flow out of Washington and out of State capitals on the census, so it is a critical issue. The problem we are facing is we are moving towards a failed census.”