Jody Hice: Democrats Worried Census Citizenship Question Will Endanger House Majority

Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) told Breitbart News Sunday that Democrats continue to fight the Donald Trump administration’s citizenship question on the 2020 census because it might endanger their House majority by losing seats in Democrat-leaning states.

Congressman Jody Hice spoke with Breitbart News Sunday host Amanda House and co-host Sean Moran over the Democrats’ move to strike a citizenship question on the 2020 census, which would have deep consequences for the Democrat party’s congressional districts in states such as California and New York.

Last week the House Oversight Committee held a hearing with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross over the Donald Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

Hice, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, told Breitbart News Sunday that America has had the citizenship question for decades and that it might impact Democrats’ future electoral strength in California because America would not count illegal aliens as citizens and California might receive fewer congressional seats as a result.

One New York Times study suggested New York and California could lose one congressional seat each, while Colorado and Montana would each gain one congressional seat.

Hice asked rhetorically, “This is nothing new, why do we not want to know how many citizens are in the country? And this ought not to be controversial at all, but Democrats are fighting this tooth and nail. The question is, why do they not want to know how many citizens we have? It’s as simple as that.”

Hice continued saying that the Democrat opposition to the citizenship question revolves around “apportionment,” which he said, “the Constitution requires us to know how many people are in the United States.”

The Georgia conservative said, “From that, the apportionment districts are drawn and frankly, the Democrats are trying to protect the fact that there are who knows how many, 10, 15, 20 million people who are not citizens in the United States who are in states like California, where there are high numbers of people who are not citizens. That enables states like that have more representatives in Washington, and I would suspect at the end of the day that is the issue for them.”

Despite mainstream media and Democrats suggesting that non-citizens do not vote in elections, San Francisco changed its laws to allow non-citizens to vote in its school board elections and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams “would not oppose” allowing non-citizens and minors to vote in local elections.

House Democrats passed H.R.1 in March, which Democrats labeled a “voting rights bill,” but most Republicans slammed the legislation as a “voter fraud and election theft” bill.

Congressman Hice said that the bill “massively waters down” the influence of American citizens in elections by allowing illegal immigrants to vote.

Hice explained, “I think it’s extremely frightening and you’re exactly right. This is exactly where we’re going if you’re following H.R. 1 which the Democrats passed through the House.”

“H.R.1 was a bill to re-reform our election law and process, and part of that bill was automatic registration. So if a person is an illegal in this country, they obviously are involved in some sort of government program, whatever, schools or whatever it may be by law, which it is not thankfully,” Rep. Hice said. “It’s not going to be signed by the president, If H.R. 1 did become law, those people would automatically be registered to vote, so where does that say to the Democrats want to take us if they want to register people in this country illegally? Then the next step obviously is the vote. And of course, that massively waters down the influence and voting power of citizens if illegals are allowed to vote, but I believe the Constitution is clear that voting is reserved for citizens, but there’s no question the Democrats are trying to alter that and change it altogether.”

In March, the House Freedom Caucus launched a podcast series to inform the world about the group of House conservatives without the filter of a news outlet. Hice, a former conservative talk radio host and the Freedom Caucus’s communications chairman, will sit down with Freedom Caucus colleagues, senators, and grassroots leaders.

Hice told Breitbart News Sunday that there remain many “misconceptions” about the Freedom Caucus and that his podcast can help spread the group’s conservative vision for the country amidst growing interest in socialism.

Hice said, “There’s a lot of talk and misconceptions about the House Freedom Caucus, there are some misconceptions, so we wanted to let people hear about the Freedom Caucus and hear about the various members. We’re at a critical point in our nation’s history, and we got in a lot of ways to re-educate America and our policies about not just as the Freedom Caucus but as a nation and a country and our Constitution, liberty, and justice. We have such a push towards socialism and things so we just felt it very important that as a Freedom Caucus that we step up and do everything we can to communicate everything we can with America and at the same time bring an inside baseball perspective with those in Congress sharing with the American people what’s happening in Congress.”

Breitbart News Sunday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 Sunday from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern.