U.S. Census Becomes Focus of Latest Power Grab

Posted by Bobby Eberle
February 11, 2009 at 7:12 am

You won't hear anything on the major news networks regarding President Obama's latest move to turn a constitutionally mandated process of counting citizens into a political move to consolidate power. Yet, that's exactly what is happening.

Every ten years, the United States Constitution calls for a head count... a literal roll call of its citizens. The importance of this head count goes without saying. Not only population growth, but also popular transfer, help determine the number of congressional representatives each state will have. In turn, a state's new population number will warrant the redrawing of congressional (as well as state) districts. Now, President Obama wants to move control of the census process to the White House, and no one in the media is batting an eye.


As John Fund notes in the Wall Street Journal, the move to transfer oversight of the census process from the Commerce Department to the White House was started after minority groups complained about Sen. Judd Gregg, who has been appointed by Obama to be the next commerce secretary. Apparently, having a Republican heading up the Commerce Department ensures that the process will be skewed, racially motivated, biased, and inaccurate. Solution? Move control to the White House. Now that makes a lot of sense.

The decision was made last week after California Rep. Barbara Lee, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Hispanic groups complained to the White House that Judd Gregg, the Republican senator from New Hampshire slated to head Commerce, couldn't be trusted to conduct a complete Census. The National Association of Latino Officials said it had "serious questions about his willingness to ensure that the 2010 Census produces the most accurate possible count."

Fund explains that the census not only determines congressional allocation, as mentioned earlier, but it also "provides the raw data by which government spending is allocated on everything from roads to schools."

So, the census is more than a head count. It is a means of power... or, more accurately, it is a means of distributing power. The Democrats and minority groups have complained for some time that the process of doing an actual "head count" does not accurately reflect the minority population (a major Democrat constituency). Instead, they prefer a method of "statistical sampling" which relies on computer models to estimate the minority population.

As Fund points out:

Starting in 2000, the Census Bureau conducted three years of studies with the help of many outside statistical experts. According to then Census director Louis Kincannon, the Bureau concluded that "adjustment based on sampling didn't produce improved figures" and could damage Census credibility.

The reason? In theory, statisticians can identify general numbers of people missed in a head count. But it cannot then place those abstract "missing people" into specific neighborhoods, let alone blocks. And anyone could go door to door and find out such people don't exist. There can be other anomalies. "The adjusted numbers told us the head count had overcounted the number of Indians on reservations," Mr. Kincannon told me. "That made no sense."

In a report in U.S. News and World Report, Michael Barone theorizes that the Obama power grab might also be unconstitutional (in addition to being a blatant move to politicize the process).

Here's an argument that it's unconstitutional for the president to take over the Census from the secretary of commerce. It goes like this: Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution provides for an "actual enumeration" and a statute passed by Congress provides that the duties under this clause are to be performed by the secretary of commerce. Article I (as Joseph Biden didn't know in debate) is about the legislative, not the executive branch. Hence, it is argued, the president can't substitute a sampling for the enumeration required to be done by the secretary.

Some Republican legislators are speaking out about this obvious power play. As Fox News reports, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) "is sending a letter to committee leaders requesting a hearing."

"I'm deeply concerned" about "the White House controlling the day-to-day operations of the Census Bureau," Blackburn told FOXNews.com.

In a draft of the letter, Blackburn said Obama's plan "may jeopardize the important and nonpartisan work product of a sensitive administrative agency, and potentially disrupt completion of a competent, reliable 2010 census.

"The American people deserve a non-partisan census in 2010, and we hope the committee will ensure that goal comes to fruition by holding an oversight hearing on the administration's potential plans to reduce the future secretary of commerce's authority over the agency," she wrote.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) called it nothing more than a "political land grab."

This is all about politics and turning the Constitution on its ear. Sen. Gregg has opposed statistical sampling in favor of an actual head count. Suddenly, oversight would be taken away from him and moved to the White House. Remember when Obama's first nominee for commerce secretary, Bill Richardson, was being vetted? As Fox News reports, "When Obama nominated New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to be commerce secretary -- he later withdrew his name -- he suggested that Richardson would be in charge of the census." So, what's good enough for Democrat Richardson is not good enough for Republican Gregg. This is change we can believe in?

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