Census Taken Out of Gregg’s Hands

When Judd Gregg’s head first reared up over White House airspace in consideration for the spot at Commerce, my first concern wasn’t about the musical chairs in New Hampshire or about the perception vs. reality of ‘bipartisanship…’ it was about the fact that we were putting the Census Bureau in the hands of a conservative Republican. I assumed I was the one of few people with this rather arcane concern, but some serious pushback started coming in the last few days, from people like Rep. Barbara Lee… particularly in view of Gregg’s vote against providing emergency funding for the 2000 census.

Today, it was revealed that in the Obama administration, the Census Bureau director would be reporting directly to the White House (or more specifically, to Rahm Emanuel) rather than to Gregg. This provoked a furious reaction from House Republicans (and you gotta wonder if they would have said boo if Obama had decided to take, say, Bill Richardson out of the Census Bureau’s line of command):

“Any attempt by the Obama administration to circumvent the census process for their political benefit will be met with fierce opposition as this ill-conceived proposal undermines a constitutionally obligated process that speaks to the very heart of our democracy,” said California Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the committee.

You wouldn’t necessarily think the Census Bureau would be such a political football, but, well, spend some time at a data-driven site like SSP and you’ll know why. Census data is the basis for House redistricting and allotting electoral votes… the very building blocks of getting and maintaining political power. The 2000 census is a case in point: left poorly funded by a Republican Congress (meaning not enough enumerators to perform adequate follow-up counts), and unable to use oversampling methods thanks to a US Supreme Court ruling, the 2000 census probably left millions of Americans undercounted.

Unsurprisingly, the undercounted tend to be the people who are both the hardest to reach (undocumented persons avoiding contact with government representatives, homeless people with no particular address) and the most vulnerable. The catch-22 is, to provide social services to these populations, they need to be counted by the Census in order to determine the magnitude of the need and to secure the proper funding. Already-strapped cities and counties lose billions of dollars in potential federal and state aid because of undercounted residents. Connect the dots, and you can see why it’s imperative to keep the Census properly funded and out of Republican hands.

19 thoughts on “Census Taken Out of Gregg’s Hands”

  1. the Census is near the top. Other than appointing Supreme Court justices (only two have been appointed by a Democrat), the Census has to be one of the most important reasons why a Dem had to win last November.

    I’m impressed that the Obama team recognizes the importance of taking the Census oversight away from Gregg. Behind all of the idealistic bipartisan/’change’ rhetoric lies an administration that is ready to kick some Republican ass. Awesome.  

  2. Ya, I know we have to do it by law.  But anyone who’s taken even basic statistics knows that it’s pointless.  A small sample is all that’s really necessary.  There’s no reason for having 300 million people fill out stupid forms.

  3. Does Obama have the power to take away the census from Gregg unilaterally, or does it have to go through congress for approval?

    I’m not sure this was a great idea anyway, but if it’s the former I’m glad they’re making this change while everybody’s focused on the stimulus and if it’s the former, they really shouldn’t have picked Gregg.

  4. and I can’t really find any illegality.

    The executive branch is granted the power to organize the executive branch as it sees fit. This means that the over-all structure of the Departments could be adjusted. The judicial branch doesn’t have much leverage to compel the executive to act in a specific way unless that acting is unconcsitutional. In this case, there is no text in the Constitution describing the role of the excutive in the Census. Congress could cut off funding but that’s not going to happen.

    I don’t see any sort of law stating that the Sec. of Commerce has to oversee the census. The Sec. of Commerce is just a made-up position in either case.

Comments are closed.