Another subtle but serious way the Trump Administration is bad for America.
Three years from right now, the 2020 Census will be underway. The Constitution orders a count of all residents every ten years. It's not just to apportion voting districts (and thereby determine how many seats a state gets in the House of Representatives), but it also determines where federal funds get spent, and provides the basic data to guide policy decisions.
The project is so massive and so vital that planning begins years ahead of time. Hundreds of thousands of people need to be hired, and a marketing campaign needs to be designed.
And things are already running behind. Congress hasn't approved a full-year funding measure for fiscal 2017, which has caused the Census Bureau to cut back on field tests:
"We did not make this decision lightly; we’re less than one year from beginning field work on the 2018 End-to-End Census Test – the final, major test for the 2020 Census. But as we enter FY 2017, we don’t have clarity about our funding for the year. Based on what we know now, the proposed funding levels require us to prioritize other activities in 2017 rather than expend the resources necessary to conduct the two field tests we had planned for 2017." - (
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The GAO has put the 2020 Census on its list of "high risk" programs - "Every 2 years at the start of a new Congress, GAO calls attention to agencies and program areas that are high risk due to their vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or are most in need of transformation." The Census was cited because costs are increasing (more people to count, for one thing), and there's little sign of more funding coming down the pipeline or any real cost-cutting measures being put in place. "Over the past 3 years, we have made 30 recommendations to help the Bureau design and implement a more cost-effective census for 2020; however, only 6 of them had been fully implemented as of January 2017." - (
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And all this is before you take into account Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric. If you have reason to think that the Census will be used to help the feds round you and your family up for deportation, even if all your papers are in order, how likely are you going to be to participate?
"I am increasingly worried about a higher undercount in many communities,” said Terri Ann Lowenthal, the former co-director of the Census Project, an organization that tracks the census. “We could be headed for a train wreck if the Census Bureau doesn't get the resources it needs." - (
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