Earlier this year, House appropriators slashed the Obama Administration’s budget request for the 2020 Census by 40 percent, and for the American Community Survey (ACS) by 20 percent. Itching to make a bad situation worse, the full House of Representatives cut another 10 percent, $117 million, from the $1.2 billion request for the Periodic Censuses and Programs account, for a total cut of 41 percent, which includes the 2020 Census, ACS, Economic Census, and other vital geographic and IT support activities.
The carnage that was the House Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations bill (H.R. 2578) would have forced the Census Bureau to:
- Postpone award of a massive communications contract.
- Cancel a nationwide test of new, cost-saving address canvassing methods.
- Stop work on a ‘help desk’ for census takers, who will be using electronic devices for the first time.
- Eliminate new methods that tell us how accurate the census is.
Another casualty of the proposed budget squeeze would have been the ACS sample size, a decrease of 15 percent, to 3 million homes, making it necessary to extend the period for averaging data for all communities from 5 to 6 years. To make sure it destabilized the ACS even further, the House also voted to make survey response voluntary.
Senate appropriators strained to be more generous, cutting the Periodic Censuses request, without specifying how the money should be spent, by a mere 30 percent. In a refreshing repudiation of the House’s anti-ACS orthodoxy, the funding committee affirmed the importance of ACS data for informed decision-making. It then offered a measly $22 million increase, over last year’s budget, for the entire Periodics account, all but ensuring a lack of resources to maintain a viable ACS sample size and keep 2020 Census planning on track.
In the wee hours of last Wednesday morning, the appropriations snuck their big holiday package, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016 (H.R. 2029, onto the Internet. $1.37 billion for the Census Bureau, 10 percent less than the agency’s request of $1.5 billion. The “omnibus” budget bill allocated $1.1 billion for the Periodics account, but prudently left it to the bureau to divvy up the funds among the 2020 census, ACS, and other activities. The House language making ACS response optional quietly disappeared, as well.
And so, another year of census funding angst has come to a close. Enjoy the rest of the holiday season, census fans, because in six short weeks, the President will kick off a new budget cycle with his Fiscal Year 2017 request. If you think we pushed a boulder up a hill this year, remember that the census budget ramp-up gets bigger as the “zero” year approaches, and that Congress has been known to kick the appropriations can down the road in Presidential election years, leaving agencies spinning their wheels under flat-funding until a new Administration and Congress take office months after the start of the fiscal year.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
No comments:
Post a Comment