Paul Ryan: “I believe that this census is a very important census. This committee has done very good work to put this census…”

“I believe that this census is a very important census. This committee has done very good work to put this census together. However, this is not an emergency. There are portions of this census, the $1.7 billion part of this census, that is arguably an emergency because of the court rules. However, I think that we could also make the argument that the Census Bureau dragged their feet and could have prepared for that. But we are not even going to argue the point. This amendment sets aside the $1.7 billion in unforeseen census expenditures. However, the other part to the census is $2.9 billion. We knew this was coming. We have known about this since 1790. When the Budget Act was passed in 1997, Members of Congress who were negotiating that deal knew it was on the horizon and intentionally did not include this in the budget because they thought they would kick it out to today, to this year. Well, my colleagues, we knew that this was coming. We knew that the census would have to be paid for. I agree with the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn). We need to pay for this honestly.”