In the history of the census, no president has ever tried to manipulate the census count in this way. And to do the exact opposite of what the president is now trying to do. Committed to counting every person regardless of citizenship or legal status under the rules of congress set in the census act of 1790. The decision to release this memo now appears designed to inflict maximum damage to the accuracy of the ongoing 2020s on this. In just two weeks, the Census Bureau will start visiting the homes of millions of people whove not yet responded to the census. With the fear and confusion and communities across the country and could leave many people to decide not to participate. This will not hurt communities that are already undercounted, underrepresented and underfunded. Addressing the chaos caused by the president to know well drained of eligible resources from the Census Bureau which is already struggling to administer in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic. And it will further divide the country at the time when we need unity. For more than two years he tried to add a Citizenship Question even though the studies showed it would depress Response Rates in many communities. When they committed the secretary and other Administration Officials denied they were trying to exclude immigrants from congressional apportionment and instead claimed falsely that the department of justice needed to citizenship data to enforce the Voting Rights act. The Supreme Court is all through their explanation calling it contrived and blocking the addition of the Citizenship Question. From secretary ross and attorney general barr refers refused to turn over documents about the question, the house held them both in contempt. Now the president is trying to gain to weaponize the census to hurt immigrants and help republicans. As the nation, we depend on the census to be nonpartisan, fair and accurate. As i told the director of the last time he appeared before us how the constitution requires it, the communities rely on it, and our democracy depends on it. We are here today at this emergency hearing because the Trump Administration is threatening this cornerstone of our democracy. We post are from four former Census Bureau directors who oversaw the census during the republican and democratic administrations. They will share their views on the president s unprecedented attempt is to manipulate the count and why it is important to count every person in the United States. And we will hear directly from the current Census Bureau director. I expect him to give us an honest assessment of how it could impact the accuracy of the census and with the burea that s doing to address this risk. I think all of the witnesses for participating today and i look forward to your testimony and recognize the distinguished Ranking Member for an Opening Statement. Chairwoman maloney, i appreciate you calling the hearing today on the 2020s in this. Let me begin by saying the 2020 census is counting every resident in the United States, regardless of citizenship. Any assertions to the contrary are scare tactics that have the consequence of reducing the participation and the census starting in august, the census will be naming out across the country to count on responding households. I encourage everyone to engage if they come to your door but if you are concerned you can complete your census online now at my census to get the 2020 census. Gov. I truly wish the hearing today for an oversight hearing of the 2020s. Unfortunately, this committee has conducted no oversight of these impacts. Once again, democrats are focusing their efforts on political issues, not the basic Good Government oversight this committee is charged with conducting. Last week President Trump took a very important under the constitution. The president directed the secretary to record an account for the house of representatives which excludes non legal residence in the United States including Illegal Immigrants. All americans should care about who is being included in the apportionment account. Including Illegal Immigrants and account for representation only does with the representation of all americans who voted into its a mockery of our basic principle of one person one vote. The president s action restores the concept of representational government envisioned by the constitution. In a country so closely divided as the United States, Illegal Immigrants and noncitizens have a material effect on the representation. Representation should matter to everyone. It is a simple matter of fairness. Predictably, the democrats will Interest Groups already filed lawsuits against the president like the sound and fury surrounding the Citizenship Question, the legal questions about the actions are likely to wind up at the Supreme Court. The hearing today is the democrats first shot across chief Justice Roberts and the other Supreme Court justices. The intimidation of the Supreme Court begins today. I urge us all to focus on the task at hand, the completion of the 2020 census count is now underway. With that, i yield back. Thank you. Now id like to introduce the witnesses. The first panel is composed of the former census directors. We are grateful to have their expertise. The first witness today is mr. Vincent who served as the census director of 1973 to 1976, and again from 79 to 1981. Then we will hear from Kenneth Pruett who served as a census director from 1998 to 2001. Next we will hear and go to robert rose who served as a census director from 2009 to 2012, and finally, we will go to doctor thompson who served as a census director from 2013 to 2017. The witnesses will be unmuted so we can swear them in. Witnesses, please raise your right hand, do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you god . I do. Let the record show that the witnesses answered in the affirmative. Without objection, your constituents will be made a part of the record and would that, youre recognized for your testimony. Stated the situations are real and their consequences. [inaudible] they are real in their consequences. The problem in the current action is that by reintroducing the desire of Holding Accountable citizen with any approach hes taken to ensure [inaudible] that is to make sure less people will be counted in states [inaudible] if this occurs, those areas will have the representation in congress and other legislative districts reduced as well and they will receive fewer government allocations based on the census count. However, the incorrect perception of the time by filling out the form is not correct because it is against the law. Any census or survey information that identifies an individual this is true even for an interagency communication. The fbi and other entities to not have the rights to access this information. Violating the confidentiality for serious counts including a federal prison sentence of up to five years and this fine is up to 250,000 a both. The protections have been challenged in the confidentiality guarantee. I will now provide an example of how the bureau and other agencies Work Together. August 13, 1983 that afternoon, four fbi agents arrived at the District Office in Colorado Springs on the search warrant authorizing them to seize the census documents including completed questionnaires and reports of their investigation of the case of the falsificati falsification. The leaders informed of the situation and after a brief flurry of telephone calls, we agreed [inaudible] while the questionnaire remained in the custody of the bureau. Ultimately, the documents replaced by protected by two walks with one key held by the fbi and the other by a local census official. Under this arrangement o only swarmed staff and employees but an fbi agent had to be present. When the door was locked debate co unlocked they would monitor activities of the census personnel. They brought in experienced enumerators from outside to review what was taking place and prepare the additional questionnaires. Census Bureau Officials prepared a report that didnt reveal any confidential information. As the chairwoman mentioned, i served as a director by five president s of both political parties. 1980 i had the honor of providing secretary of commerce with the Census Bureau statements with a number of representatives. I was also proud of the fact that the low income and minority population took an estimated jump nearly 97 . The 1980 census was also a demonstration of the nonpartisan manner. It was designed to end up planned during the republican presidency and successfully implemented as designed and planned. It will give to congres be up td the press to make sure that this information be addressed forcefully that is through motivation. The entire population of persons in the United States should participate willingly to reaffirm that everyone should be counted. Thank you. Thank you so much for your testimony and service. We will now hear from doctor john eastman, professor of law and Community ServiceDirector Center for constitutional jurisprudence school of law and senior fellow claremont institute. Doctor eastman. [inaudible] should we go to another one . We seem to have some technical problems. We will go to the next speaker and then come back to him, because there seems to be a problem with connecting with them. Thank you. We will now turn to doctor pruitt. You are now recognized. Thank you very much, madam chairwoman. We know that this discussion will include concerned about putting the noncitizens and order the illegals into the apportionment account. I just have to say three things about that. First, the census has never done a. Second, they cant do it by asking questions. Youre not going to knock on the door and say oh you or are you not in the third, the administrative records are inadequate to do it. So even if it was a good idea, we do not yet know that we can do it. And with that as my starting point, i want to go on and say some things about the larger census as the Ranking Member invited us to do. We all know we are about 62 with response to self reporting, but that leaves more than a third of the population unaccounted for and i have to really stress this point. The nonresponse followup, hard to count very difficult since this territory as we all know and we are not in control. It is we as the Census Bureau or the congress or the white house in control of whether we will be able to do this count successfully before the end of the year which are now on that schedule and we know about 15 of the population has already told us they do not intend to cooperate with the census. I would like to make two or three quick points. The bureau will know as no other unit of government can ask the numbers will accurately reapportionment fairly distribute federal funds for a decade. It knows the census count as a denominator of all of the statistics we rely on, whether its the number of consumer products, whether it is a different rate of infection across the population groups and so forth. Every number that we use for ten years is anchored to the quality of the census. Secondly, the bureau knows that these statistical fact can easily damage and the numbers produced that will inflict on society will create serious damage and its not pretty. Ten years of Homeless Veterans because we dislocate their hospitals. Ten years of Tropical StormDisaster Relief but is too little too late because Traffic Congestion is underestimated, tenures of planning because they have flawed estimates of how many firstgraders are going to show up. Ten years of a missed chamber of commerce because predictions of population growth and characteristics are offbase. We know that will be the consequences of the census that doesnt count as best it can. It is separate from is in the apportionment account. We have to start with a good census. The third thing i would say about this is the bureau will not want to inflict the damage that the flawed numbers will produce. The Census Bureau is too honorable, scientific, proud of professional standards and faithful to its constitutional duties they look to release substandard results. I urge the congress to share the burden and i would ask the congress to please appoint using some other institution of its choosing to produce predetermined Quality Metrics that can assess if the final 2020 members would easily match which the bureau knows they should be and has very good estimates from the demographic analysis, very good estimates of how many people across the states ill b all the way down e census tract levels. So if we could have this special group of experts to sort of create the metrics by which we will judge if we have an adequate census to do what its supposed to do and if not, what steps should the country take . Very good, thank you chairman maloney and other members of the committee thank you for inviting me to participate in this important hearing. I actually President Trumps productive is not only a good policy but perfectly constitutional, and i want to address quickly something mr. Pruitt said. I think there is a confucian between the two purposes we use the census for. One is for the apportionment of south by article one, section two. The other exercises the spending power or the commerce power to do a whole myriad of other things like allocate federal resources to determine where we are going to need schools and va hospitals and what have you. It doesnt have anything to do with the broader purpose of count on the census. And i think the political theory underlines the reason we have the apportionment clause is important so let me begin with that. We get our political theory from the declaration of independence. It sets out universal principles all men are created equal and that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights that we created those cre principles in a particular context, the declaration starts off by talking about one people separating themselves from another. It is based on the consent of the people to be governed, not on the content of the people elsewhere but on the consent of the particular people setting up the government. Those principles, the consent of the government find themselves s in under the text of the constitution from the beginning it says we the people of the United States. It doesnt say we the people of the world or any foreign nationals who happened to be present. If we the people of the United States. The languages in the next india push amend clause that representatives are chosen by the people, the same referring back to the people of the United States. And then it says that people again and they choose their representatives is on the total number of persons and that refers back to their representatives and the people in the several states. Proof of this is excluding indians not taxed. That was a clause designed to recognize and exempt from the census count those people who were in the states but not part of the body politics and noncitizens as the Supreme Court held, indians not taxed are excluded from the census for the reason that they are not citizens. In other words, the whole political theory of the declaration codified into the constitution is that we are counting people for the purposes of apportionment in order to reflect accurately the representative strength and divide equally and fairly their representation among the several states based on their numbers of people who are citizens and part of the body politic. I will give you an example. If the census, if the 1984 olympics were held in 1980 iindia happene1980 andhappeneds today, we wouldnt have added two or three congressional seats to california because there were a couple Million People visiting los angeles for the next. This has always been our history. Diplomats, visitors, they are not part of the body politic. They do not adhere to the necessity of the theory of the Representative Government. The Supreme Court has upheld this as well. Its recognized in the equal protection voting case that the number of citizens they refer repeatedly to the language of citizens rather than total population. The disparity between the citizens and noncitizens was roughly similar one district to another. So we didnt have to get into this question. But we are now in a circumstance where there are differences statebystate between a number of citizens compared to the total population. To continue to count total populations for apportionment purposes is to give way to people to states that have a large number of noncitizens living within their borders. That isnt consistent with the principles of the