Sean Patrick Maloney: “I rise in opposition, but first I would like to thank the gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Mollohan], the gentleman…”

“I rise in opposition, but first I would like to thank the gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Mollohan], the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Shays], and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Sawyer], for all their help on the Census issue. And to the rest of my colleagues, if they believe in a fair and accurate Census, they simply cannot vote for this bill. Getting a fair and accurate count is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. If my colleagues are not counted, they are not represented. If they are not counted, they are not part of the Federal funding formulas. This deal, as many have said, funding is provided for statistical sampling through September of 1998, yet at the same time it stacks the deck against achieving it by helping to build a case for those who plan to kill it in 1999. And the Speaker has vowed to kill the sampling issue in 1999. This legislation aids this plan by putting into place a campaign to smear it. First the deal allows opponents to file multiple lawsuits to tie the Census up in court. The deal also allows the Speaker, using the House general counsel, to sue on behalf of the House to block sampling. In other words, the Speaker, representing the viewpoint of the RNC, will be using taxpayers' funds to block sampling. Second, it asks the bureau to run two censuses at once; and, thirdly, it confuses the public by issuing four sets of numbers instead of just one.”