The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies will hold a hearing on the Commerce Department’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget request on March 5, 2020. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will testify.
This may be a useful opportunity to probe for further details on 2020 Census spending in the current fiscal year, since the Census Project identified a “lack of transparency and specificity in the White House’s budget request in how Census Bureau funds are being spent to complete the 2020 Census” in our Fiscal Year 2021 appropriations request. Senators could also try to find out why the Department proposed to cut funding for the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), even though the budget request emphasized how important the Department believes the survey to be, and for more details on the Census Bureau’s planned transition of data systems and what it may mean for data quality.
Hopefully you can feed the questions that need to be asked to the committee members who are willing to ask them.