Commerce Secretary William Daley today said Census Bureau employees can be counted on to carry out a fair census in 2000 using statistical sampling techniques.
Daley denied that, under sampling, the census could become politicized, noting the Census Bureau has a "totally professional" staff that includes only three political appointees.
A group of about a dozen House Democrats, including several from minority caucuses, emerged from a White House meeting with Daley expressing satisfaction with administration support for the use of sampling and for their opposition to the House GOP plan to allot money for the census in stages.
Daley called "acceptable" the Senate funding scheme for the census, which he said contains no restrictions.
House Commerce-Justice-State Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., said an amendment he would offer to the fiscal 1999 Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill would address the concern about politicization, "however invalid it is," by directing the National Academy of Sciences "to oversee the census methodology and policy and to certify it as being accurate and in every way, fair and honest."
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