Initial Steps in FY 2024 Process Portend Challenges for Funding Census

On June 15 and 22, the U.S. House and Senate Appropriations Committees, respectively, voted to allocate funding to their 12 subcommittees. This initial, yet critically important, step in the appropriations process must occur before individual spending bills can be drafted and debated.

In the House, allocations to the subcommittee, which the Committee approved by a vote of 33 to 27, are $119 billion below the nondefense cap that Congress and the White House agreed to as part of the recently enacted debt limit law (Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023). In the Senate, the Committee voted 15-13 to approve allocations consistent with the nondefense and defense caps that were agreed to in the debt ceiling law.

What does this mean for the Census Bureau and its funding outlook? The Commerce, Science, Justice (CJS) Appropriations Subcommittee, which is responsible for funding the Census Bureau, received a slightly higher allocation in the Senate ($69.6 billion) than its House counterpart ($58.6 billion). While the Senate CJS allocation is $11 billion more than the House number, both numbers are below what the subcommittees received in FY 2023. As a result, the CJS subcommittees have less overall funding to distribute to agencies under their jurisdiction. Census stakeholders are continuing to urge the CJS subcommittees to provide the Bureau with $2 billion in FY 2024. The Bureau needs robust funding next year to not only sustain its ongoing surveys and programs, but also to ramp up preparations for the 2030 Census, including designing and releasing an initial operational plan.

The House and Senate CJS appropriations subcommittees will consider or “mark up” their FY 2024 bills before the middle of July. Leaders in the House of Representatives anticipate taking the CJS appropriations bill to the House floor for consideration before the chamber adjourns in August. The Senate has not yet announced a tentative floor schedule.