Ted Poe: “My colleagues and I--Congressman Gowdy, Congressman King, Congressman Scalise, and Congressman Landry-- have introduced…”

“My colleagues and I--Congressman Gowdy, Congressman King, Congressman Scalise, and Congressman Landry-- have introduced an amendment to prohibit funds from going to the Census Bureau to enforce a criminal penalty that is imposed upon people who choose not to complete the American Community Survey. The American Community Survey is not the same as the decennial, or every-10-year, census that is required by the U.S. Constitution. The census, of course, is conducted every 10 years to account for the population and includes, basically, 10 questions. The American Community Survey is a different survey handled by the Census Bureau that has 48 questions and is sent to 250,000 people every month, or 3 million Americans a year. The questions that it asks have nothing to do with national security, but it asks specific--in my opinion, intrusive--questions to determine Federal funding for certain areas. Plus, businesses use these answers to the questions to make business decisions on locating or not locating in certain parts of the United States. I don't argue the benefit of the overall purpose of the American Community Survey. My concern is that it's intrusive. And does the Federal Government really have the right to ask certain questions? There are 48 questions. I'm not going to go through all of them. However, I would like to put into the Record the American Community Survey. There are three questions I would like to mention, however.…”