Political Quotes

“I will be voting for the amendment offered by the ranking member of the subcommittee. The effort to get a Supreme Court decision on the census before we take the census simply will not work. The American Constitution is very clear. For once I wish some of my colleagues paid more attention to the very clear writing of Justice Scalia. You cannot by statute constitute the U.S. Supreme Court as an advisory body to tell us in advance of what happens. There is an amendment that says you cannot go forward with the census sampling until the Supreme Court has decided it, but the Supreme Court will disregard this. Have we not learned from what happened with the line-item veto? The requirement that there be an actual case or controversy and an aggrieved party is something that is strictly enforced by the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Speaker, if Members want to ban sampling, they ought to offer that as a vote. I would not be for it. But no one should console themselves that we can vote to have the Supreme Court by our instruction take a case which constitutionally they will not take and then have solved the problem.”