Kendrick Meek: “I just want to ask the Repubs one question: What is this? Some kind of a treatise on the Clinton administration? What is…”

“I just want to ask the Repubs one question: What is this? Some kind of a treatise on the Clinton administration? What is it? An inquiry on the Clinton administration? Or is it a dissertation on the census? That is what we are here for. We are here to talk about the census. And I want to tell my colleagues something. It is not funny to me. It is not funny because they have undercounted the people I represent, and they not only undercounted them, they did it in the last census and they are doing it again. But it is not funny to me, because since the beginning of this country, you have grinned and scoffed at freedom for the people I represent. There are a lot of things in this census that you are not even thinking about. The Voting Rights Act is in there. My people died for the right to vote. If you are going to skew the figures because you do not want to count them correctly, that removes the humor from this situation for me. For the past six censuses you have undercounted African-Americans. It is time to tell this country we want everybody counted. I have been working on this census issue since the 104th Congress. Mr. Clinger was the chairman of the committee at that time. I could not get a sentence to the front. Once we got a sentence to the front, we could not get a hearing. So it has been just a sequential means of gagging the Democrats about the census. Now the time for this gag is over.”