Commerce, Justice, Science, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2010 -- (Senate - October 07, 2009)

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Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I thank Senator Vitter for proposing this amendment. It follows the idea of the bill I introduced a few weeks ago that is now S. 1688, the Fairness in Representation Act.

My bill, obviously, will not pass before we get so far down the road to deal with this issue. So it is appropriate for the amendment to be offered, and we can accomplish the same thing with the amendment that would happen if my bill were to pass.

Since my bill was introduced, I have had three primary objections to it. I
wish to deal with each of those, because they would probably be raised with respect to this amendment as well.

No. 1, you cannot ask somebody who is an illegal alien to identify himself or admit that he is here illegally when you are doing the census calculation. Well, it may surprise some people to know that the Census Bureau already asks for this information. It collects it on the ongoing American community survey. That is not as comprehensive as the entire census. If it were, we wouldn't need to do it here. But the Census Bureau already has a track record of asking this question without running into that particular difficulty. The information collected by the census is 100 percent confidential under penalty of law, and the census takers can make that clear to any individual who might be concerned about that. So that is not a major problem.

No. 2, people say, well, since the census data is used to determine funding levels for a variety of programs, and since the illegal aliens get involved in the funding, if you do this, you will be cutting funding for State programs that service the illegal aliens, and that is not fair. The reality is that this amendment, and my bill, do not cut funding. There is nothing in the bill that would say that funding formulas would change. This is an attempt to find out how many illegal aliens we have in this country and where they live--the statistical information, which we do not fully have now, as a result of the American community survey. We have a hint at it in the American community survey, but we are extrapolating for that and making a guess.

Since the census is a once-every-10-year attempt to discover what America is like, who the Americans are, and where they live, it seems to me very logical that the census should add this particular piece of information to it.

Well, after these two arguments have been made and dismissed, the third argument--and we get this most strongly from the people at the Census Bureau--is that it is too late, too bad; you should have brought it up earlier, Senator Bennett, but we started to print our surveys already and we cannot reprint them; it is too late.

I wonder if they have ever thought of printing an extra sheet or extra card. You don't have to reprint the whole survey if you have one additional question you want answered. I have seen books where there have been errors in the book that have come out after the book is published with an errata sheet--that on page so-and-so this particular entry is not correct. It is not that big a deal for the Census Bureau to do some kind of addendum that could be printed and made available so we could solve this particular problem.

All right. Aside from knowing, what do we intend to do with this data if we get it? Senator Vitter made reference to this in his discussion of the amendment. I want to use it today to deal with the question of the apportionment of the voting powers in the House of Representatives. If we go back in history, we find there was no more controversial issue in the writing of the Constitution than the question of representation in Congress. Small States wanted it by State. Large States wanted it by population. The great compromise came along that created this body and said that membership in the Senate would come by State, and membership in the House of Representatives would come by population. But it was left up to the State legislatures to determine how that population would be apportioned. Each State was given a number of representatives based on the population. But the State legislatures could determine where the lines were drawn and how the districts would be created. We had a situation develop over time where States would draw a line and simply leave it. People would move from one congressional district to the other, but the line would not be changed. There was a situation where there were many congressional districts whose representation, numerically, was substantially less than that of some other congressional districts in the same State.

This brought about a lawsuit that went before the U.S. Supreme Court. In the decision in the case of Reynolds v. Symms, issued in 1964, the Supreme Court gave us the one man, one vote rule, which said that the districts should be close enough in population that, in effect, every voter had the same weight of representation in the House of Representatives.

If we have this tremendous number of illegal aliens concentrated in a few States, we have an impact of changing the one man, one vote dictum of the Supreme Court; that is, a State with a large number of illegal immigrants will see to it that its voters have greater representation than voters where the illegal immigrants are not.

All we ask in this amendment and in the bill I proposed is that the Census Bureau be instructed to ignore the presence of illegal aliens when allocating the number of representatives in a State. As I say, it has nothing to do with the funding of programs, because the programs have to be funded where the people are, and we understand that. I believe it is entirely constitutional that the allocation of the congressional seats can be done on the basis of those who are here in a legal circumstance.

As the Senator from Louisiana has pointed out, this is not a trivial matter. There will be eight States that will lose representation to four States if this is not done. Four States' voters will be overrepresented in the House of Representatives because of the large population of illegal immigrants in those four States, and nine States will be underrepresented because of the fact that their voters do not happen to live in a State where there is a large population of illegal aliens.

I am happy to join my colleague from Louisiana in cosponsoring this amendment. I hope our colleagues in the Senate will see fit to support it.

With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, NASA is at a very difficult crossroads right now in determining the future of human space flight, and I would like to talk about that.

NASA is in the process of deciding where to put its full support and funds--whether it should be behind the current Constellation Program or whether it should change course and go in another direction.

The Augustine Commission has announced some recommendations and described them both but leaves it up to NASA to make the decision as to where it will go. I am very concerned NASA will agree with those recommendations that will relate to access to the International Space Station and will affect low-Earth orbit in these difficult budgetary times.

We have just finished the space station. So the time comes now to decide how to use it to its greatest advantage. The space station was built with the shuttle program, and it has always been understood that the space shuttle will be retired next year. After that happens, we will be relying upon Russia to get our astronauts into space.

The original plan was that once the shuttle was retired, the next vehicle to get us into space would be the Ares I. That is the pivotal point where the decision has to be made: Shall we go ahead with Ares I?

I am very concerned that NASA may want to divert precious resources from the Ares I program in the hope that the commercial space industry can fill the void. Well, it is disconcerting to me because we have a successful track record of the Ares program but a less than desirable record of the commercial space industry. We have invested over 4 years and $6 billion in the Ares I and Orion programs, and it is on track.

Just last month, we had a successful ground test of the new Ares I rocket in Utah. Later this month, NASA will conduct the first flight test--on track to deliver a safe, reliable rocket.

Changes in NASA's plan should only be made if alternatives are available to provide significant advantages in cost, schedule, performance, and safety. The program that is working should not be dropped unless those advantages are very clear, and as of now there are no credible alternatives. To me, it makes sense to stay committed to a program we have already invested billions of dollars in and which has met its significant benchmarks.

Right now, the Ares I is the only credible solution we have for getting crew and cargo services into space once the shuttle is retired. The Ares I system came out of the Gehman report that followed the Columbia accident, recommending that the shuttle be replaced with a launch system that would maximize crew safety. Aries will achieve those standards.

The system builds on an existing manufacturing infrastructure that builds on our strengths. We already have the industrial base to go ahead with Ares. We do not have to invent anything new. We paid for the research. Why would we forego years of successful research and billions of dollars in the promise of an untested method of getting into space? Why would we take the gamble? If it turns out the hope that the commercial people could fill the void is wrong, we will have lost the industrial base that preserves our existing alternative to the commercial system.

What will NASA do then, if that which they might place their hopes in turns out to fail, and they have dismantled the program we now know works? How much money would we save if we were confronted with that situation a few years down the road? We risk losing the industrial base that is paramount to American competitiveness.

I know I will be accused of being parochial because a good portion of that industrial base is in my home State of Utah, but that does not lessen its significance or its competence.

The Ares program takes advantage of facilities and an already-trained workforce that has made the most reliable rockets in the world, having flown and tested over 200 of these solid rocket motors.

We are already seeing reductions in our manufacturing base in this circumstance in Utah. Just this last week, 550 more people who would be critical to NASA in maintaining that base have lost their jobs, and if we abandon the Ares program, we could lose thousands more. Yes, I am interested because it is important to my State, but I am equally, if not more, interested because I think it is important to the Nation not to take this kind of gamble.

I seriously urge the administration to take a look at the bird they have in their hand, the bird that has flown over 200 times successfully, and not be too excited about the bird that may lie waiting for them somewhere in the bush.

I yield the floor.

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