Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. I would first like to point out and to show here, to America, Jaci Hermstad.…
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. I would first like to point out and to show here, to America, Jaci Hermstad.
Jaci Hermstad is from Spencer, Iowa. Her identical twin sister, in 2011, passed away from an aggressive form of ALS, which we often know of as Lou Gehrig's disease.
The DNA from her sister is part of a treatment for Jaci, who was diagnosed on Valentine's Day of this year with the same disease. And because of the work and the cooperation of the FDA, some wonderful scientists, and a lot of work done by my staff--and I want to stand here and thank Speaker Pelosi for her cooperation--we were able to convince the FDA to grant a waiver so Jaci could receive this treatment.
She is in Columbia University, now, receiving treatments. Her third treatment is this morning, just about as I speak, and it will be a triple dose. And if this works--and she is in my prayers every day--we have opened a path to one day put an end to that deadly and debilitating disease of ALS.
And by the way, she is a spunky gal with a sassy sense of humor, and if you knew her like I know her, you would love her.
This is Jaci. She is definitely in my prayers this day and every day.
Census Questions
Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about the topic that will be raised by the President this afternoon in the Rose Garden, as I understand, and it is the topic of whether the question of ``Are you a citizen of the United States of America?'' should and could be on the Census.
I have introduced a bill, H.R. 1320. This has been introduced last time and this year, and H.R. 1320 is a bill that has asked these questions. It says:
What is person number one's legal status?
Are you a citizen or a national of the United States?
Are you a lawfully admitted permanent resident?
Are you none of those things, or do you have an other lawful status?
And then it follows up and says: If you have other lawful status, what is that status? Are you here on a green card? Are you here on a student visa? Are you here on a work permit of some kind?
So, we need a full inventory of the population of the United States. That
was the purpose of the Census, not only for redistricting, but so that we could see how America is growing, in what ways America is growing.
And, by the way, we are establishing immigration policy here in the United States Congress by an enumerated power in our Constitution, I might add, and we are doing that with people on that side of the aisle saying: We don't want to know any more than how many homo sapiens we can count within the shores of the United States of America. But they want to know a lot of other minutia if it helps them politically.
So I brought this legislation forward, and we know that there was a case before the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court looked at that case.
I looked back at the short form Census in 2010 when Barack Obama was President. And here is what it asked. It wants to know: What is your name? What is your phone number?
I mean, how detailed do you have to get?
We are only asking are you a citizen or are you not a citizen is what the Commerce Department has decided to ask. I think there should be more details.
But the Obama Census short form said:
What is your name?
What is your phone number?
What is your birthday?
What sex are you?
I point out they didn't ask your gender. They ask sex because that is actually definitive.
And what is your ethnicity? What is your race?
Do you have an unmarried partner?
And if you have children, they ask this question:
Are they biological or adopted sons or daughters?
So they want to know, are they boys or girls and were they born into the family or were they adopted into the family. By what means are they part of your dependents?
But you can't ask a question: Are you a citizen of the United States?
All of these questions and many more, and we can't ask the question: Are you a citizen of the United States?
The Supreme Court found that the executive branch was granted the authority by the United States Congress--and that is the Commerce Secretary himself--to form the questions on the Census. This is a constitutional authority that was specifically granted to the executive branch of government by the United States Congress. But the Court says: You have the authority to ask the question, but we think you have the wrong reason to ask the question. So now we are remanded back to the lower court to come up with a better reason.
Here is my reason: We want to know how many citizens are in America. That is all you need to ask. It is simple as it can be.
And they are well within the law; they are well within the Constitution. It is just that the Obama-appointed judges don't seem to be reading the Constitution and the law, and they seem to have political motives.
