[CTPP] Census Funding

I got this from long time friend Terri Ann Lowenthal who has been my expert contact to Census Legislative issues. Terri Ann is a consultant for the Census Project and below is what the latest is on the ACS and Census Bureau cuts. ----------------------------- Thursday, May 10 @ 11:30PM Census Project colleagues: A quick update now that the House has passed its version of the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations bill. First, in the chaos over the votes to make ACS response voluntary and then eliminate the survey entirely, we missed another amendment, sponsored by Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL), that shifted $20M from the Periodic Censuses account to a Justice Department local law enforcement program. That's on top of the $4 million cut through the Lynch amendment. Combined with the Appropriations Committee cut to the Periodics account, the Census Bureau says (in the new Bloomberg BusinessWeek article below) that the Economic Census is at risk again, as is planning for the 2020 Census. With regard to the vote to eliminate the ACS entirely, I know some folks think that the final C-J-S funding bill would never include such a provision. That is probably correct, but it also is possible (and, I am told, the Census Bureau fears) that the vote will be used as a bargaining chip in conference. House Republicans will agree to fund the ACS if conferees make response voluntary. And if that happens, the Census Bureau obviously won't have the additional funds ($60M???) needed to ensure reliable small area data, so stakeholders will lose census tract data and possibly more. The situation is not good, folks, despite the fact that it appears right now that members of the House (all of them!) were playing politics with the census. The Census Project is drafting a sign-on letter to all Senators, expressing strong (STRONG!) opposition both to the House funding cuts and, of course, the votes to make the ACS voluntary and then eliminate the survey. We will circulate the letter sometime on Friday. If the Senate takes up the Commerce Appropriations bill next week, we will have to put a short deadline on it again. If consideration is put off until after Memorial Day, as some are now saying, then we have extra time. Unlike past sign-on letters, we will try to get a very large number of organizational (not individual) signers from the national, state, and local level, and will list them all simply alphabetically. If you have state and local affiliates that want to get more involved (in addition to signing the letter), please refer them first to the Census Project website. They can look at past letters and fact sheets, as well as the blog, for basic information on the key issues at hand. We (at the Census Project) are pedaling as fast as we can but are having a hard time keeping up with requests for background information and strategic advice this week. This is a modestly funded project, so please be patient with us. Thanks for all you are doing to step up to the plate in support of the Census Bureau's programs and reliable data to guide policymaking and resource allocation. There is no question the Census Bureau needs to contain the cost of the 2020 Census, but pulling the rug out from under them makes that goal less reachable. Terri Ann Terri Ann Lowenthal | Consultant | TerriAnn2K(a)aol.com (h/o) 203-353-4364 | (c) 202-258-2425 --------------------------------------------------------------- Bloomberg BusinessWeek (on-line) Economics Killing the American Community Survey Blinds Business By Matthew Philips on May 10, 2012 Last week we wrote about how funding for economic data-gathering agencies such as the U.S. Census Bureau was under threat from House Republicans looking for ways to cut spending. Apparently, they mean business. On May 9 the House voted to kill the American Community Survey, which collects data on some 3 million households each year and is the largest survey next to the decennial census. The ACS—which has a long bipartisan history, including its funding in the mid-1990s and full implementation in 2005—provides data that help determine how more than $400 billion in federal and state funds are spent annually. Businesses also rely heavily on it to do such things as decide where to build new stores, hire new employees, and get valuable insights on consumer spending habits. Check out this video of Target (TGT) executives talking about how much they use ACS data. Initially, it looked like the House might simply repealthe survey’s mandatory requirement, something the Census Bureau has said would just make it more expensive since they’d have to send more agents into the field to collect the data manually, rather than being able to legally require people who receive the survey to fill it out. Representative Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) went a step further, leading the charge to dismantle the ACS entirely on the grounds that it’s unconstitutional. Webster gained his seat as part of the 2010 Tea Party revolution that won Republicans control of the House. Apress release on his website criticizes the ACS for invading people’s privacy by requiring them to answer questions such as what time they leave for work, how long their commute is, and whether they need help going shopping. Those who receive a survey and fail to respond are subject to fines of as much as $5,000. The fight over cutting funds for data-gathering agencies has opened up a rift in the deficit-hawk crowd. A handful of organizations that generally support big fiscal spending cuts have voiced their support for fully funding the three main data-gathering agencies: Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The Chamber of Commerce, for example, strongly advocates funding them, since its members rely so much on the information they provide on basic things such as household spending, per capita income, and population estimates. The ACS is of particular value to them, says Martin Regalia, Commerce’s chief economist. “It is especially important to some of our bigger members for trying to understand geographic distinctions and other granularity in the economy.” Tom Beers, executive director of the National Association of Business Economists, says that without good economic data, businesses would be “flying blind.” He adds: “You end up in a guessing game about what’s going on in the economy. The types of losses that result are far worse than what you end up spending to fund these surveys.” Webster says ending the ACS could save $2.5 billion over the next decade. Asked to respond to concerns from the business community over the impact of stopping the ACS, Webster’s communications staff referred me to his comments on the House floor, which don’t address those concerns. Proponents of the ACS argue that the survey is particularly important since it forms the basis of so much other data. “The loss of the American Community Survey will cause chaos and inefficiency in the operations of business and government in the U.S.,” says Andrew Reamer. In 2010, Reamer published a report for the Brookings Institution measuring the overall impact of the ACS. In a statement released on May 10, the Census Bureau said eliminating the ACS would “mark the first time in the country’s history that we would not collect and share vital economic and demographic measures of the country. These cuts would also keep us from conducting the 2012 economic census. Eliminating the American Community Survey would make it extremely difficult if not impossible to contain the costs of the 2020 census.” Contacted last week, economists at conservative think tanks Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation all expressed support for the data-gathering agencies since all three rely heavily on the statistics they produce to study the economy. “Those agencies are essential,” says Phillip Swagel, an economist and nonresident scholar at AEI. “The data they provide really tell us what’s going on in the economy. This shouldn’t be a political issue.” Philips is an associate editor for Bloomberg Businessweek. -- Ed Christopher 708-283-3534 (V) 708-574-8131 (cell) FHWA RC-TST-PLN 4749 Lincoln Mall Drive, Suite 600 Matteson, IL 60443