In the early part of this decade, former Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) inserted language into a Senate appropriations bill report requiring that the 2020 Census’ overall, 10-year budget be no more than the costs of the previous 2010 Census. The bill report language became law. For better or worse, this led the U.S. Census Bureau to rely heavily on untested IT/internet options for the 2020 Census to cut costs.
By the middle of this decade, House Republicans were routinely inserting bill language into their versions of the annual census appropriations bill decrying the respondent “burden” to those who participated in the American Community Survey (ACS). Thankfully, the Senate never acceded to the House GOP’s bill language. Therefore, these attacks against the ACS never became law!
Now the Senate Appropriations Committee is proactively challenging the annual House bill report on the ACS. Thanks to information supplied by Census Project stakeholders, the Senate version of this year’s bill contains language stating the particular value of the ACS’s information to rural communities (which are Republican-dominated). The Senate language effectively negates the House action for FY 2018.
It’s for these reasons that the Census Project carefully reviews committee report language each year. Words matter!
This post has been updated to correctly refer to Sen. Mikulski.
It was Barbara *Milkuski*
On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 10:01 AM, The Census Project wrote:
> The Census Project posted: “In the early part of this decade, former > Senator Barbara Murkowski (D-Md.) inserted language into a Senate > appropriations bill report requiring that the 2020 Census’ overall, 10-year > budget be no more than the costs of the previous 2010 Census. The bill r” >
Thank you for catching this. We’ve corrected the error.