Alan B. Mollohan: “I commend the gentleman for raising this issue. I assure him that I share his concern. I think most members of our…”

“I commend the gentleman for raising this issue. I assure him that I share his concern. I think most members of our subcommittee share his concern with any unwise cuts to Census. That happened in full committee. There was an amendment which used Census as an offset; $25 million came from the periodic census, $5 million came from salaries and expenses. Both of them were very regrettable offsets. We are going to work to restore those offsets as we move forward into conference, and I have a considerable amount of confidence that we will be able to achieve that. Again, I commend the gentleman for bringing this up and giving us an opportunity to express and share our concerns with him and also to make that commitment that we are going to work as hard as we can as we move forward to restore this funding to Census. It is usually important to the Nation that the decennial census move according to a regular process which requires a lot of preparation in the early years. And the gentleman's foresight in seeing that and his insistence on our proceeding accordingly is really appreciated because we want that pressure from the body to make sure that we adequately fund Census.”