José E. Serrano: “let me make a few brief comments here. We keep talking about full funding and an adjustment to the census count. We have…”

“let me make a few brief comments here. We keep talking about full funding and an adjustment to the census count. We have all been in support of that. But let us remember that perhaps the largest reason why the Census Bureau did not adjust the count was for the tremendous congressional pressure that fell upon it when it was discussing that issue. Now, that is not going to satisfy the sponsor of the amendment. However, I would like just to alert the sponsor of the amendment that the biggest bump-up this year, or in years past, certainly since September 11 of 2001, has not been the Census Bureau. The Census Bureau is just an easy target because, supposedly, it does not have a constituency, except for poor minorities who want to get counted and do not get counted. The big bump-up has been the Department of Justice, the Department of State, and the FBI. But no one would dare take money from there to pay for cops in the city, because that has big congressional, Presidential, administration and local support. So if we are going to talk about who to take money from, let us sometimes be courageous enough to take it from where it exists, in bundles, and not where we could cripple the future count in our communities.”