Political Quotes

“I don't think the issue here should be looked at as whether or not the EDA needs more help. It's why, again, we are bashing the Census Bureau. I really think that it's surprising that we would do it on this side, since we will note for the next many hours that there's plenty of folks on that side that will want to do that. When I first got on this subcommittee years ago and I had the privilege of being ranking member to Chairman Rogers and then ranking member to Chairman Wolf, I could never figure out what the attack was on the Census Bureau. Then it dawned on me--and I may be totally wrong--that some folks would just like the Census Bureau to do just enough, meaning if you count yourself, that's fine; but if you have to go out and do extra dollars to count folks who ordinarily may not count themselves, then that's not good for some folks and the results may be something they don't want to see. That's the only explanation I could come up with for the fact that--as we will see in the next hours--there will be many desires to cut the Census Bureau and, in some cases, get rid of the whole department. What we need to know and remind ourselves is that there's probably very few vital functions of agencies like the Census Bureau that are more important than this one. Plans, policies, redistricting, other decisions in this country are based on that count that takes place every 10 years.…”