Patrick Kennedy: “I find it very curious that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would make the argument that this is not…”

“I find it very curious that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would make the argument that this is not political, that they say they do not want politics in this. Hello, everybody. This is the most political issue we will probably face in the next 2 years of this session, okay? This goes to who is going to control this House for the next 10 to 20 years. So I do not want to hear my colleagues disingenuously represent this bill as simply about counting, because that is hogwash. The fact of the matter is the census is about who has got the money and who has got the power. It should be very curious to the Republicans that the Congressional Black Caucus, that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, that the Congressional Asian Pacific Caucus, all three of them, every minority caucus in this Congress, are against their sampling proposal and their Census proposal. Why? Because they say that in the effort to get accuracy, they want to delay the Census process. Well, delay equals death for accurate counting. Mr. Speaker, this is about the heart of government. It is about the distribution of money and power. There is nothing more fundamental to this debate for the next 2 years than this Census. Bridges, roads, education, law enforcement, health care, all of that will be decided by how many people exist in each State and in each city across this country.”