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GOP threatens legal action over Census oversight

By Carrie Dann CongressDaily February 12, 2009

House Republicans on Thursday threatened legal action against the White House for its decision to extend its jurisdiction to the Census Bureau and demanded that President Obama respond positively to a letter they sent on Wednesday urging him to reverse the action.

"If the president doesn't acquiesce to our letter, and we suspect Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will not insist on that, then we would seek the courts," said House Oversight and Government Affairs ranking member Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

At a news conference headlined by Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, Issa added that he believes the federal courts will agree that the White House's efforts to assert greater oversight of Census Bureau operations violate the law.

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In their letter, Boehner and 14 other Republicans warned that White House involvement or oversight of the census process would "result in the politicization of the census and open the door to massive waste and abuse in the expenditure of taxpayer funds, billions of which are distributed on the basis of census data."

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement to the Associated Press on Wednesday that the Oval Office's collaboration with the Census Bureau would not interfere with the regular chain of command of its as-yet-unnamed leadership. "This administration has not proposed removing the census from the Department of Commerce and the same congressional committees that had oversight during the previous administration will retain that authority," he said.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., on Thursday criticized the Republicans for "mak[ing] a show about nothing." Maloney added, "Even though the White House issued a statement saying that they were NOT proposing removing the Census [Bureau] from the Department of Commerce or directing the Census from the White House, today House Republicans had a press event to decry what ISN'T happening," she said.

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COMMENTS

  • Actually Robk, I have been through a deprogramming. I use to think of myself as a conservative...listened to and believed everything I heard by the rightwing commentators and the unfair and unbalanced news network, and I railed against taxes and regulation...then I got a conscience and began thinking about others and not just myself when it came to public policy. You should try the same. I know the thought of a census bureau counting certain underrepresented people frightens people like you, but if you don’t like the U.S. for the fact that it is a representational democracy, and that organizations like ACORN has the freedom and right to sign up people to vote, then maybe a move to a nice dictatorship in the middle east or southeast Asia would be a better political fit for you.
    rick Posted February 17, 2009 12:15 PM
  • I must say I am becoming increasingly concerned about the inanity of the GOP. They are making themselves irrelevant to the political process as they have united to stop the stimulus package (unsuccessfully) and now by threatening a lawsuit over a census non-issue. They will fail, of course. But the bombast and negativism from the GOP -- in the face of a electoral mandate larger than seen since the Johnson administration -- runs counter to the public's expressed desire for comity between the parties. Unless this changes republicans in Congress will be painted with a Herbert Hoover image that fortell even more massaive electoral losses in 2010. I urge the leaders to respect the will of the American People and work with the democrats to solve our pressing problems.
    The Consumate Analyst Posted February 17, 2009 10:42 AM
  • Why, why, why? Could it be that Obama wants to broaden his political base for the next term by re-defining who Americans are? Can he turn illegals into legals? European alchemists tried doing that for centuries, turning lead into gold. Can he suceed where they failed? Stay turned as the Divided States of America gets even MORE divided by this fool.
    ChristmasTree Posted February 17, 2009 10:00 AM
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