Cite as: 505 U. S. 788 (1992)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
Secretary and reported to the President. The Court's argument cannot be harmonized with a statutory scheme that directs the Secretary to take the "decennial census" and the President to report to Congress figures "as ascertained under the . . . decennial census." This language cannot support the Court's view that the statute endows the President with discretion to modify the census results reported by the Secretary.
The legislative record, moreover, establishes that the Executive involvement in the process is to be wholly ministerial.7 The question of the discretion allowed to the President was discussed on the floor of the Senate, and the sponsor of the bill, Senator Vandenberg of Michigan, stated unequivocally that the President exercised no discretion whatsoever: "I believe as a matter of indisputable fact, that function served by the President is as purely and completely a ministerial function as any function on earth could be." 71 Cong. Rec. 1858 (1929).8 In a colloquy with other legisla-7 The Senate Report, for example, states: "The objection that this is an improper 'delegation of power' to the Department of Commerce (which takes the census) and to the President (who reports the arithmetic) is answered by an examination of the facts. No power whatever is delegated. The Department of Commerce counts the people (as it always has done) and the President reports upon a problem in mathematics which is standard, and for which rigid specifications are provided by Congress itself, and to which there can be but one mathematical answer." S. Rep. No. 2, 71st Cong., 1st Sess., 4-5 (1929).
8 At another point, Senator Vandenberg explained: "The bill calls upon the President to report the result of a census to the Congress. We have always depended upon somebody to report the result of a census to us. The bill calls upon the President, when he reports the result of the census, also to report the result of a problem in arithmetic. If the President did not present the answer to that problem in arithmetic, somebody else would have to do the problem in arithmetic, because no matter what method is embraced for purposes of apportionment, there is inevitably needed a formula which, like a chemical formula, may in itself be somewhat inscrutable, and yet which always reaches the same conclusion." 71 Cong. Rec. 1613 (1929). The accuracy of Senator Vandenberg's
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