Leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus recently wrote to House and Senate leadership, urging them to provide the “Census Bureau with the $7.5 billion exemption included in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 House Budget Resolution, called the “Investing for the People Act of 2019.” The current two-year budget and debt ceiling deal consists of a lower $2.5 billion cap exemption for the 2020 Census. The 2020 census count will be one of the most consequential counts in the 21st century, and it is an urgent civil rights issue facing our country. That’s why we must invest the appropriate amount of funding to the Census Bureau to ensure a fair and accurate count of all residents in the United States.”
For more on the budget deal, see the Census Project’s July Update.
Rep. Karen Bass, chair of the CBC, and Rep. Steven Horsford, chair of the CBC Census 2020 Task Force, referenced estimates from the Urban Institute that “1.7 million Black residents may be uncounted in 2020, leading to a misallocation of resources over the next ten years. An inaccurate count will hurt vulnerable populations access to health care services, housing, schools, and economic development plans among other priorities. Moreover, in states with high Black populations such as Georgia, 22 percent of the residents live in hard-to-count areas, causing the state to lose $407 million in annual federal funding over the next decade.”
Read the letter.
The Census Project 