The Powers of Congress.

The constitutional powers of Congress are enumerated in Article I. These include the power to appropriate money, authorize borrowing, levy taxes, regulate the currency, regulate interstate commerce, establish lower federal courts, maintain the armed forces, declare war, propose amendments to the Constitution, and (in what is called the "Necessary and Proper Clause" or the "Elastic Clause") "Make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other …

…way which maximized minority representation in Congress. However, when this led to bizarre-shaped districts like North Carolina's 12th, later Supreme Court decisions held redistricting could not be based on race as a predominant factor. A 1999 Supreme Court decision held that the Census Act of 1976 prohibits sampling for purposes of apportioning House members, forcing the Census of 2000 to rely on an effort to enumerate everyone, a strategy some experts held to be less accurate than sampling.