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Billionaire Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross Lied About Why He Added Census Citizenship Question; Now Will Be Deposed
Every decade since 1790, as required by the Constitution, the federal government has undertaken a painstaking census of its people, the accuracy and fairness of which serves the interests of both political parties and of every citizen. The decennial count is used to apportion seats in the House of Representatives and set the boundaries of congressional districts. It determines how tens of billions of dollars in federal aid are divvied up. Back in May 2017, Director John Thompson of the U.S. Census Bureau abruptly resigned after Congress refused to provide adequate funding for the upcoming 2020 census.
In 2020, foreign-born groups might be less likely to respond to the census because, earlier this year, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross directed the Census Bureau, which is under his purview, to include a question about whether the respondent is an American citizen.
Fears of a federal immigration crackdown could lead many Americans to avoid participating in the 2020 federal census, which will include a controversial question about citizenship for the first time in 70 years. That, in turn, could cause as many as 1.5 million children to go uncounted, imperiling their access to federal programs, including food stamps and early childhood education.... the citizenship question could exacerbate a longstanding problem.
How did this citizenship question come about? Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the Department of Justice mandated it. As it turns out, that was a complete lie and he commited perjury in front of Congress.
In March, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, approved a controversial question about US citizenship on the 2020 census, claiming that the Justice Department needed it for “more effective enforcement” of the Voting Rights Act. Ross said at the time and in subsequent testimony before Congress that he approved the question after the Justice Department requested in December 2017 that it be added.
....new documents released as part of a lawsuit by New York state against the Trump administration directly contradict Ross’s public comments, showing that the commerce secretary repeatedly lobbied the Justice Department to add the citizenship question after consulting with anti-immigration hardliners. On September 8, 2017, Earl Comstock, a top official in the Commerce Department, wrote to Ross, “Justice staff did not want to raise the [citizenship] question given the difficulties Justice was encountering in the press at the time."
Actually, it was Trump and his anti-immigration cronies who told Ross to do this. He followed their ordered and lied to cover it. Bannon and Kobach, a future all-star team in the depths of hell.
One of the senior administration officials who lobbied Ross to add the question was Steve Bannon. In July 2017, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach—at the time the vice chair of Trump’s now-defunct Election Integrity Commission—wrote to Ross “at the direction of Steve Bannon” and said it was “essential” that the citizenship question be added to the census.
Kobach’s correspondence with Ross contradicted the Trump administration’s stated rationale for the question—Kobach never mentioned the Voting Rights Act in his letter—and suggested the question was added to reduce the political clout of areas with many immigrants and boost Republicans. The Justice Department said in court that Kobach, Bannon, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who have all advocated aggressive crackdowns on immigration, were among those involved in pushing for the citizenship question.
Now he's headed to court to undress his lies further with the hopes of ending this citizenship question and removing his perjured, pathetic self from the Cabinet.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross must sit for deposition concerning his move to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census, a federal judge ordered Friday [9/21/18]. A judge with the Southern District of New York, Furman has since April been presiding over a challenge by 18 states, as well as several cities and civil rights groups, to the attempted shakeup of the decennial census. They contend that Ross added the citizenship question to discourage participation by immigrants of color. An undercount of these populations, which traditionally vote Democratic, would likely reduce the political power and federal funding of blue states for a decade.
PERJURY.
Secretary Ross testified under oath that he was ‘not aware’ of any discussions between him and ‘anyone in the White House’ regarding the addition of the citizenship question,” the opinion states. “But there is now reason to believe that Steve Bannon, then a senior advisor in the White House, was among the ‘other government officials’ whom Secretary Ross consulted about the citizenship question.”
The citizenship question threatens the reliability of the decennial census and creates an opening for the administration to misallocate House members and electoral votes to their advantage. This could have serious long term implications:
1) An accurate decennial census is crucial in fairly distributing federal spending, and many federal program rely on accurrate census figures to accomplish their goals.
2) An accurate census is crucial to properly allocating representatives at both the federal and state level. Republican underfunding of the bureau damage census takers' ability to accurately account for those population most difficult to count - low-income Americans and minorities; the same demographic groups most likely to vote for Democrats.
Source:
https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-orders-secretary-ross-to-sit-for-deposition-in-census-case/