Just when President Bush was getting past the chads of Florida, he faces yet another dangling controversy over race, representation and fairness.
It is reapportionment time. The president faces crucial choices over how to use new census data to redraw congressional boundaries and distribute about $185 billion a year in federal funds to the states.
The census misses some people, particularly some hard-to-reach urban minorities. It counts some people more than once. The latter group is more likely than the undercounted group to be white, of higher income, college students or owners of more than one home.
To compensate for the disparities, which tend to undercount Democrats, the Democrats want to use a method called sampling, in which the census would be adjusted based on an analysis of who was missed in the actual count. Republicans call sampling a sneaky way to invent people in order to enhance Democratic representation. They cite the Constitution’s requirement of an “actual enumeration” of the population for political reapportionment, and they have a solid argument.
Early reports indicate the undercount for 2000 was smaller than it was in 1990, when the census missed an estimated 8.4 million and double-counted 4.4 million. Still it is likely the census once again missed large enough pockets of people to jeopardize aid to areas that most desperately need it.
What’s Bush to do? We should know soon. On Friday, Commerce Secretary Don Evans announced he has reversed Clinton administration policy that left the decision about sampling with the Census Bureau. Evans will make the decision himself.
Bush’s political dilemma is particularly precarious now. Republicans cling to a slim lead in the House. Democrats, particularly black Democrats, complain that the GOP suppressed black votes in Florida last November. Bush has opposed sampling, but last weekend at a Democratic congressional retreat he deferred judgment until he could be briefed on the census.
On this dilemma, Bush can look to the record of his father for guidance. Ten years ago, President George Bush’s Commerce Secretary, Robert Mosbacher, outraged Democrats by refusing to adjust the 1990 census figures. But, later, on the separate question of how federal funds would be distributed, Mosbacher found that sampled data, if scientifically sound, could be used.
Using the actual count for reapportionment–which the Constitution requires–and adjusted figures for funding–on which the Constitution is silent–offers Bush a classic Washington compromise.
