I saw President Clinton this past Monday, and he told me... the one that the most people would walk up to him on the street and thank him for was the Family and Medical Leave Act.

But statistical agencies like the Census Bureau should be absent political pressures so that the data remains unbiased and objective.

I think that is a very wise focus that you put forward.

I strongly believe that an institutional reform could help to establish the scientific integrity and independence of census-taking.

As we debate health care reform, Census data tells us that 46 million Americans are without health insurance.

I also share your concern of the independence of the Census Bureau and welcome my colleague to look at legislation I have introduced that would create an independent Census Bureau totally separate from any political influence.

I cannot stress enough how heavily policymakers on this committee and at all levels of government rely on the data produced by the Census Bureau.

We then proceeded to react to their recommendations, and this Congress passed 47 of their recommendations.

I truly believe that our government was at its best following the 9/11 crisis, when we came together and created a bipartisan professional commission to study exactly what went wrong.

I for one would like to see the report coming back from the bipartisan commission on what really caused this crisis, and their ideas of what we need to do to reform our system.

Helping the economy is a bipartisan effort.