The war of words between Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu and Senator David Vitter has escalated.
On Wednesday night, Senator Landrieu sent out a press release describing the letter she sent out earlier during the day to Senator Vitter responding to a prior letter sent by Senator Vitter to her office.
The issue is whether a Vitter amendment to insert a line (in a funding bill for the census) that declares citizenship on the US census would prevent Louisiana from losing a Congressional seat as a result of reapportionment.Senator Vitter and almost all of the Louisiana delegation had sent Senator Landrieu a letter urging that she and Sen. Harry Reid refrain from block a floor vote on the Amendment.Congressman Cao of New Orleans refused to sign the letter to Senator Landrieu.
In a response to Senator Vitter, Mary Landrieu called the Amendment a “political stunt” and said that to do what Senator Vitter wanted to do would require a Constitutional Amendment and not a mere amendment to a funding bill.
Here is the press release sent by Senator Landrieu to Senator Vitter on Wednesday evening and a link to the letter she sent to the Senator previously during the day.
WASHINGTON – United States Senator Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., this evening rejected Sen. David Vitter’s, R-La., call to support a deeply flawed amendment to the Senate’s Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations bill. In a letter to Sen. Vitter, Sen. Landrieu outlines the various problems with the Vitter-Bennett amendment, including that it does nothing to address Louisiana’s Congressional apportionment problem.
At a cost of $1 billion to American taxpayers, the Vitter amendment would only add a question to the 2010 Census. This question has been part of past censuses, but in no census have illegal immigrants ever been excluded, nor would the Vitter amendment require that they be excluded.
“Your amendment, as currently drafted, would only do harm to our country by delaying the Census at cost of approximately $1 billion to our already beleaguered taxpayers and to our state by stalling important projects, including law enforcement grants and $500,000 for the New Orleans Crime Coalition, to name just a few,” Sen. Landrieu wrote.
Calling the Vitter amendment “political gamesmanship,” Landrieu noted that to fix the Congressional apportionment process, Congress would need to amend the Constitution, something that the Vitter amendment fails to do.
“It is clear that your amendment would neither amend the Constitution nor garner accurate statistical data on the extent of the nation’s population of legal or illegal immigrants,” Landrieu wrote. “In addition, any demographer worth his salt (which would not be Elliott Stonecipher) would tell you that Louisiana’s probable loss of a seat would occur even if there was not one illegal immigrant in the United States. Unfortunately, Louisiana is one of only two states in the union to lose population in the last decade.”
The letter closes with Sen. Landrieu inviting Sen. Vitter to join a serious effort “to reform the laws that govern illegal immigration and Congressional apportionment.”
