IF WE COUNT EVERY HUMAN BEING IN AMERICA, WHERE ARE WE GOING TO GET ALL THAT EXTRA CASH?

Hype over the U.S. census this year has been incredible. The message has been loud and clear: We do a census every 10 years so we can get -- no, make that grab -- our fair share of the federal government's pot of gold, right? Wrong.

The Constitution says we do a census to apportion members of the House of Representatives among the states. But the hard, cold fact is that the census, over the years, has become a tool of government giveaways.

To listen to the U.S. Census Bureau, every state in the nation lost money because of undercounting in the 1990 census. And we don't want that to happy again, do we?

Why not?

The message seems to be that if we can count enough people, we'll get more federal dollars -- and this will cut taxes. A lot of people believe that. Maybe the Census Bureau even believes it. But where in the heck does that extra money come from? Our pockets.

Not one word of all this hype mentioned the real reason for the census -- legislative apportionment -- until the actual census forms started arriving in mailboxes this week. Finally, there is a mention of the constitutional reason for counting everyone, quickly followed by more yammering about counting everyone so we get all that money.

Sure, we need to count everyone. The census is important for a lot of reasons. But the fact is we do a pretty good job of counting people. If we miss a few heads along the way, so be it. There is very little that is perfect in our government. Why do we expect the census to be different?