Washington » Utah Sen. Bob Bennett's recent plan to require the 2010 census to ask every American about their citizenship status is akin to changing the design of a building in the middle of construction, said his Democratic challenger Sam Granato.
"Anyone who has been involved in a construction project can tell you that the budget is blown when changes, additions and deletions are made to the plans once the actual building process is under way," Granato said in a statement. "This business principle is apparently lost on Senator Bennett. I had thought better of his business skills."
The Census Bureau already has printed millions of forms that will be sent to every household next March for the 2010 count. Bennett has argued that a question should be added about citizenship status. He believes undocumented immigrants should not count toward a state's population for the purposes of determining the number of U.S. House seats it receives.
"The system is broken," Bennett said, "and areas of the country with high illegal populations should not be rewarded with greater representation in Congress."
The Commerce secretary and the census director have said it is impractical and extremely costly to add the question this late, requiring reprinted forms and a thorough rewrite of software that would add untold millions to the $7 billion already budgeted for the census.
Bennett insists printing a separate sheet is feasible. He is pushing the idea in an amendment offered with Louisiana GOP Sen. David Vitter to the Commerce Department funding bill. The Senate is expected to debate and possibly vote on their amendment as early as next week.
