As The Census Project has been reporting, Fiscal Year 2025 begins on October 1, and neither the U.S. House of Representatives nor U.S. Senate have passed the Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) appropriations bill, which funds numerous agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau.
On September 9, Congress returns to Washington, D.C. for approximately two weeks before returning home to campaign in the run up to the November 5 general elections. Before leaving town, however, Congress will need to pass a continuing resolution (CR) to keep all Federal government agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau, funded.
Typically, CRs maintain flat funding for agencies except for those granted “anomalies.” On Tuesday, September 3, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent a list of requested funding anomalies to Capitol Hill. Census stakeholders are concerned that the Census Bureau was not on this initial list, which reflects agencies that OMB believes need funding above their Fiscal Year 2024 level through the first quarter of the new fiscal year.
As the Census Bureau prepares for the 2026 field test in six sites, census stakeholders are reminding policymakers to heed lessons learned from a comparable point in the last census cycle. The bureau had planned three site tests for 2017, in large part to evaluate updated counting methods in rural communities and on American Indian reservations. When Congress failed to pass the FY 2016 appropriations bills on time, and also didn’t include a funding anomaly for the Census Bureau, the Census Director had no choice but to cancel the 2017 tests, because he didn’t know if Congress would give the Bureau enough money to move forward in all sites. Unfortunately, American Indians living on reservations suffered the highest net undercount of any race group, and rural households were missed at a higher rate than nonrural households, in the 2020 Census.
“The lack of thorough testing could have played a part in that outcome. That’s why Congress needs to ensure sufficient and on-time funding for the Census Bureau in FY 2025, to make sure the 2026 Census Test is comprehensive,” said Terri Ann Lowenthal, census consultant and a member of The Census Project Advisory Committee.
The Census Project will keep census stakeholders apprised of action as Congress works with the White House to complete the Fiscal Year 2025 appropriations process.
