Future of American Community Survey Remains to be Determined: Mandatory requirement and funding levels up in the air

By Steve Pierson posted 07-06-2012 14:33

  

With the House action in May to first make the American Community Survey (ACS) voluntary and then to eliminate it altogether, the future of the ACS remains in limbo as we await action by the Senate. (See House votes to eliminate American Community Survey.)  In this blog entry, I will update you on the current standing, the various dynamics, and the actions the ASA is taking with other Census Bureau stakeholders to protect the ACS.

The House took its action when considering the FY13 funding bill for Census -- the Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) appropriations bill -- on the House floor. After the Senate Appropriations Committee approved the CJS bill in April (see FY13 Statistical Agency Budget Developments), the bill was originally scheduled floor consideration of the CJS bill in May. Current predictions for Senate floor consideration range from July to not at all (in which case it would be part of an "omnibus bill.")

Meanwhile, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a bill to make the ACS voluntary on May 10. S. 3079 is the Senate companion bill to H.R. 931, Congressman Ted Poe's (R-TX) bill in the House to make the ACS voluntary. It was Congressman Ted Poe who proposed the successful amendment to the CJS bill to prohibit funding for enforcing the mandatory requirement of the ACS. S. 3079 has three cosponsors: John Boozman (R-AK), Tom Coburn (R-OK), and David Vitter (R-LA).

Besides the mandatory requirement for the ACS, the FY13 funding level for the Census Bureau is a large concern. The House level is $87 million below the FY12 level and $98 million below the Senate FY13 level. (See FY13 Statistical Agency Budget Developments.) Because the House bill also prohibits funding for the ACS, the effective House level is a much steeper drop and would endanger other Census activities including the Economic Census.

Dynamics: Authorization versus Appropriation, Hearings and a Voluntary ACS
To understand the different scenarios for how the ACS will fare, it is important to understand the difference between appropriations and authorization. Loosely speaking, appropriations (i.e., the Appropriations Committee) provides the funding levels and authorization sets the policy and provides oversight. The authorizing/oversight committees for the Census Bureau are the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (OGRC). The following table summarizes these distinctions

                     

 Authorization 

 Appropriations 

 

 Role 

 Policy/Oversight  

 Funding levels

 

 Term

 Can be multiple years  

One year 

  Relevant Committee  
for U.S. Census Bureau  

House OGRC
Senate HSGAC

Appropriations Committee:
CJS subcommittee 

                   Table: Authorization versus Appropriation

One of the criticisms of the Poe amendment on the CJS appropriations bill is that it is authorizing on an appropriations bill and this would surely be part of the debate should Senator Paul propose a similar amendment on the CJS bill in the Senate.

The oversight committees are now actively engaged in the ACS discussions. As reported in a previous blog entry, House Panel holds hearing on making American Community Survey voluntary, a House OGRC subcommittee held a hearing in March on Poe's bill, H.R. 931. There was consensus among the Congressmen present and the witnesses about how important the ACS is but some of the Republican Congressmen questioned whether it should be mandatory and whether businesses should be paying for ACS data.

A Senate HSGAC subcommittee is expected to hold a hearing on the ACS this month. [7/18 note: The hearing took place today and can be viewed here.]

Besides authorization versus appropriations, another dynamic is interpreting what Poe's CJS amendment means. Technically, the survey remains mandatory but the Census Bureau and the Department of Justice are not allowed to spend funds to enforce the mandatory requirement. Since no funds have been spent for such enforcement for the ACS and its precursor -- the decennial census long form -- in recent history, there is uncertainty over how much the Census Bureau would have to change its current practice. Could it maintain the mandatory language on the forms? What would field agents be allowed to say?

Because of the ambiguity of Poe's CJS amendment, it's hard to say what the impact would be on costs, response rates and data quality. The impacts of the Poe bill, H.R. 931, are better known. A summary of a 2011 analysis of the 2003 Census Bureau testing for a voluntary ACS is available in the Cost and Workload Implications of a Voluntary American Community memorandum. The memo concludes, "To support production of sufficiently reliable ACS small area estimates, an additional $66 million would be required each year." These results are consistent with the experience in Canada where their long-form census was recently made voluntary. The collection response rates fell to 69%, down from the 94% achieved for the 2006 long-from census, after spending an additional $30 million for the shift to voluntary. (In terms of data quality, results aren't expected until next year.)

Scenarios: FY13 appropriations versus longer-term authorizations
As my previous blog entry, House votes to eliminate American Community Survey, states, the House actions on the ACS in May have their most recent roots going back to 2010 when the Republican National Committee approved a resolution to either eliminate the ACS or make it voluntary. With the Census Bureau doing more than count people going back to 1790, however, the discussions about what the Census Bureau should be asking also go back in history.

One article that stands out for me is a 1968 article in Nation's Business titled, "Row Over Census: Will We Get the Facts?" The second paragraph reads, "Business, labor, state and city are lined up almost solidly for continuation of full, mandatory response to questions on employment and housing, as well as population." A few sentences later it reads, "A couple of dozen Congressmen, however, contend that some of the proposed questions probe too deeply into personal lives and should be answered voluntarily."

The point of bringing up this history is that the ACS discussion is likely to be an ongoing issue. For the shortrun (i.e., the remaining six months of this Congress), the FY13 CJS appropriation is likely to be the only legislative vehicle for changes to the ACS. In the next Congress, attempts to change the ACS through the appropriations process remain likely but there is also now a much greater likelihood of authorization legislation moving through the Senate HSGAC and the House OGRC. Such legislation could reduce the number of questions currently asked and could address the mandatory requirement.

For the FY13 CJS bill, if it is considered on the Senate floor and passed, the next step would be a FY13 CJS conference committee where the differences between the House and Senate bills are reconciled. During floor consideration, it is possible Senator Paul will offer a Poe-like amendment to the CJS bill prohibiting funds be used to enforce the mandatory requirement. Even if the Senate approves the CJS bill with no restrictions on the ACS, a possible conference compromise with the House is to make the ACS voluntary (i.e., prohibit funding to enforce mandatory requirement for FY13) but to stick with the Senate's much higher funding levels. Should this be the compromise, it is unlikely the conferees would provide the additional additional to "support production of sufficiently reliable ACS small area estimates." If the compromise is to keep the ACS mandatory but with funding closer to the House level, the Census Bureau would have to make major program cuts.

It is very important to continue communicating to both the House and Senate to go with the Senate funding levels and to not have any restrictions on the ACS.

Actions in support of ACS
Census Bureau stakeholders have mobilized in support of the ACS and other Census Projects, including the business community, state/local government organizations, civil rights groups, researchers and policy groups. The activity has ranged from informing the broader stakeholder community, communications to/with Congress, and alerting the media. The ASA has played a leading role in organizing meetings on the Hill for representatives from the various stakeholder sectors. These meetings have included key leadership, appropriations, and authorization staff in addition to sponsors of S. 3079. The ASA has also been part of the media outreach. The ASA will remain active through the FY13 appropriations process and into the next Congress.

Other Developments
In other developments over the last couple months on the ACS:

See also:

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