Bill Pascrell: “I am alarmed to hear that the Republican candidate for President is opposed to use the sampling methodologies for the…”

“I am alarmed to hear that the Republican candidate for President is opposed to use the sampling methodologies for the 2000 Census. That methodology has been certified by the National Academy of Sciences, which is the body which determines scientific methodology with regards to medicine, the environment, biology, etcetera. I am alarmed because these studies that I have just defined have shown that this is the only true way to obtain an effective count of our population. There is no such thing as a perfect count regardless of which methodology we use. But certainly the least perfect, the one which brings us further away from the number, is to believe that we can count noses by counting noses. It just does not work that way. In particular, members of the population that have been historically undercounted are ethnic minorities and immigrants where there is a tremendous mobility in domicile from month to month, from year to year. That decision by the Republican candidate for President casts serious doubt on the claim that he wants to reach out to the minority communities of America. The beauty of the census is that it has no barriers due to education, background, citizenship, income, or heritage. It is, in fact, one of the most democratic events we undertake in our Nation. There is no anecdotal data reflecting any breach of confidentiality in the history of the United States census. I think that is quite a record.”