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CRITICAL BUDGET ISSUES AFFECTING THE 2010

CENSUS, PART 2

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INFORMATION POLICY,

CENSUS, AND NATIONAL ARCHIVES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JULY 30, 2008

Serial No. 110–125

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.oversight.house.gov

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California, Chairman

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland

PETER WELCH, Vermont

JACKIE SPEIER, California

TOM DAVIS, Virginia

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

BILL SALI, Idaho

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

PHIL BARNETT, Staff Director

EARLEY GREEN, Chief Clerk

LAWRENCE HALLORAN, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INFORMATION POLICY, CENSUS, AND NATIONAL ARCHIVES

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri, Chairman

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

BILL SALI, Idaho

TONY HAYWOOD, Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on July 30, 2008 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Murdock, Steven H., Director, U.S. Bureau of the Census; Kenneth

Prewitt, Carnegie professor of public affairs, School of International

and Public Affairs, Columbia University and former Director, U.S. Bureau of the Census; Marvin Raines, former Associate Director for Field

Operations, U.S. Bureau of the Census; and Glenn Himes, executive

director, Civilian Agencies, the MITRE Corp. ............................................ 5

Himes, Glenn ............................................................................................. 26

Murdock, Steven H. ................................................................................... 5

Prewitt, Kenneth ....................................................................................... 10

Raines, Marvin .......................................................................................... 17

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Missouri, prepared statement of .................................................................. 3

Murdock, Steven H., Director, U.S. Bureau of the Census, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 7

Prewitt, Kenneth, Carnegie professor of public affairs, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University and former Director,

U.S. Bureau of the Census, prepared statement of ................................... 12

Raines, Marvin, former Associate Director for Field Operations, U.S. Bureau of the Census, prepared statement of ................................................. 19

(1)

CRITICAL BUDGET ISSUES AFFECTING THE

2010 CENSUS, PART 2

WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 2008

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON INFORMATION POLICY, CENSUS, AND

NATIONAL ARCHIVES, COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:05 p.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Clay and Yarmuth.

Staff present: Darryl Piggee, staff director/counsel; Jean Gosa,

clerk; Alissa Bonner and Michelle Mitchell, professional staff members; Charisma Williams, staff assistant; Dorian Rosen, intern;

Benjamin Chance and Molly Boyl, minority professional staff members; and John Cuaderes, minority senior investigator and policy

advisor.

Mr. CLAY. Good morning. The Information Policy, Census, and

National Archives Subcommittee will come to order.

Welcome to today’s hearing entitled, ‘‘Critical Budget Issues Affecting the 2010 Census, Part 2.’’

Without objection, the Chair and ranking member will have 5

minutes to make opening statements followed by opening statements not to exceed 3 minutes by any other Member who seeks recognition.

Without objection, Members and witnesses may have 5 legislative days to submit a written statement or extraneous materials for

the record.

I will begin with the opening statement.

As Congress considered the fiscal year 2008 budget 9 months

ago, this subcommittee held a hearing to review the consequences

of a continuing resolution on census operations. The issue then was

whether the Census Bureau had special needs that would warrant

an exemption or anomaly in the CR to address its unique circumstances.

Last year, due to inadequate funding, the Bureau reduced the

scope of its dress rehearsal and canceled testing for other important census operations.

Today, we will examine the impact of a potential fiscal year 2009

CR on operational plans for the decennial census.

As the Bureau ramps up to the 2010 census, its annual budget

will grow exponentially. It is critical that the Bureau have necessary funds to complete key census operations in fiscal year 2009.

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Without sufficient resources, the Bureau will be unable to open

local census offices in every Congressional District, hire personnel

and, most importantly, they will not be able to conduct address

canvassing. Delaying any of these operations will be detrimental to

the decennial. Cancelling address canvassing will result in an incomplete and inaccurate master address file.

The master address file is the data base used to mail census

forms to every household. If we start with an inaccurate master address file, census accuracy is doomed. We cannot afford to let this

happen.

Let me thank all of our witnesses for appearing today, and I look

forward to your testimony.

Since Mr. Turner is not here, then we will go into testimony

right away. Let me start by introducing our witnesses.

First, we will hear from the Honorable Steven Murdock, Director

of the U.S. Census Bureau and then from former Census Director,

the Honorable Kenneth Prewitt. Next, we will hear from the Bureau’s former Associate Director for Field Operations, Mr. Marvin

Raines, and our final witness will be Dr. Glenn Himes, executive

director of the MITRE Corp., Civilian Agencies Mission.

Thank you all for appearing before the subcommittee today and

welcome.

It is the policy of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to swear in all witnesses before they testify.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. CLAY. Let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in

the affirmative.

I ask that each witness now give a brief summary of their testimony and please limit your summary to 5 minutes. Your complete

written statement will be included in the hearing record.

Dr. Murdock, you may start us off.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:]

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STATEMENTS OF STEVEN H. MURDOCK, DIRECTOR, U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS; KENNETH PREWITT, CARNEGIE PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL

AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY AND

FORMER DIRECTOR, U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS; MARVIN

RAINES, FORMER ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR FIELD OPERATIONS, U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS; AND GLENN HIMES,

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CIVILIAN AGENCIES, THE MITRE

CORP.

STATEMENT OF STEVEN H. MURDOCK

Mr. MURDOCK. Chairman Clay, ranking member, members of the

subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to speak with you today

on the critical budget issues affecting the 2010 decennial census.

You asked that my testimony focus primarily on the amount of

funding required to ensure that no disruption occur to decennial

operations in the event that we are forced to operate under a continuing resolution in fiscal year 2009 that begins October 1st. That

is just 2 months from now, and it is a significant concern for us.

We have been working diligently to get the infrastructure in

place to conduct the most accurate and complete census possible.

We have made considerable progress toward that end in getting

our field data collection automation contract on track and assuring

that our other contracts are operating as expected.

All systems are on track for rolling out our early local census offices and for getting them staffed up for address canvassing. Our

integrated communications program is moving forward on schedule. We are in the process of getting all of our partnership specialists in place to begin their outreach efforts, and all of these efforts

are critical to a successful census.

However, without adequate funding, these plans cannot move

forward. It is imperative that the Congress support the President’s

2009 request for the Census Bureau.

A continuing resolution that freezes funding at levels of the previous year can present serious difficulties for the decennial census

program. This is because, as you well know, our cyclical budget

needs serially increase in the years leading up the decennial census

and decline thereafter. Difficulties most often come up in years

ending in nine and zero, the years before and during the decennial

census.

By the end of fiscal year 2009, only 6 months will remain until

census day, April 1, 2010. Clearly, operations and infrastructure

not fully in place at that time would seriously compromise their operation.

The President’s budget for the Census Bureau in fiscal year 2009

is more than two times the current funding level, at almost $3.1

billion. This is compared with $1.4 billion in fiscal year 2008.

Most of this increase is for implementation of the 2010 decennial

census program, the cost of which nearly triples from $1 billion in

fiscal year 2008 to $2.7 billion in fiscal year 2009. So, as you can

see, a CR that freezes our budget at the fiscal year 2008 level

would make it very difficult for the Census Bureau to conduct operations critical a successful 2010 census.

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For example, by October 1, 2008, the Census Bureau must begin

opening, equipping and staffing 150 early local census offices

around the country that will serve as the field offices for managing

address canvassing operations.

The early months of fiscal year 2009 are extremely critical to

completing final development and testing of equipment and software to be used in address canvassing as well as the operations

control systems that manage the entire operation.

Finally, we will also begin hiring partnership specialists in our

core group of 680 field partnership specialists which we hope to

have onboard by January 2009.

Communications activities such as support of the Partnership

Program, creative development and testing, public relations development, the Census in School programs and outreach must continue.

Let me clear that we at the Census Bureau, the Department of

Commerce and the administration more broadly are all aware of

challenges that a multi-month continuing resolution would present

to the 2010 census program. We are currently analyzing potential

impacts and developing spend plans in case agreement has not

been reached on such bills by the beginning of the upcoming fiscal

year.

While we have not yet finalized this work, the administration understands the situation and is committed to ensuring that we have

a successful, accurate census in 2010.

I will be happy to take any questions that you may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Murdock follows:]

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Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Dr. Murdock.

Dr. Prewitt, you may begin with your opening statement.

STATEMENT OF KENNETH PREWITT

Mr. PREWITT. Thank you, Congressman Clay.

I think that there is probably no hearing in the run-up to the

census which is as critical as this one on the simple principle that

no money, no census.

Money, I think, in this conversation has to mean three things:

adequate money, timely money and flexible money. It is maximizing all three of those principles which we believe made the 2000

census successful.

I am going to talk a bit about the 2000 census because that is

what I can offer to this conversation, what worked and what did

not work in 2000.

It has been generally described as a very successful census, not

by me. It is not my right to claim that. However, I would like to

say the Bush administration, even though the census was conducted under the Clinton administration, the Bush administration,

in the presence of Secretary Evans speaking before the Senate, described it as the most accurate census this Nation has ever conducted.

We take that as high praise from an administration that wasn’t

always, from a party that wasn’t always in line with the way we

were trying to do the census in 2000. But I just want to stress the

way in which we think that happened.

Just like this census, before we really got started, we were under

a lot of pressure. It was thought that we would not have a good

census. We had enormous critical oversight not just by the subcommittee, of course, as it should have been, but also by the GAO,

by the IG, by the Congressional Monitoring Board.

GAO, for example, had us as high risk, starting as early as 1997

and never took us off their high risk list.

In this environment, we did well. We reversed the decline in

mail-back response rate, which was critical.

More importantly, we drove down the under-count. The number

of missed persons was reduced dramatically from an earlier census,

and we reduced the differential under-count. That is we counted

proportionally, racial minorities, the unemployed, the less well educated, the undocumented much better than we ever had in previous

censuses.

So I am happy to say, and Marvin Raines knows why it works

because he was there making it work, that we are proud of what

was accomplished in 2000.

The question is how did it happen, and it happened because the

Congress really was on the mark with respect to the funding strategy: supplemental funding, emergency funding, certainly an anomaly on continuing resolutions.

As we know, governments frequently find themselves in the CR

world, and you can’t do a census, as the Director just said, under

a CR that flat-funds you when things are wrapping up and as your

own opening comment made clear.

We did not have that problem in 2000, and that made a huge difference. The Clinton administration put a lot of high level attention

11

to getting the census underway, but the U.S. Congress, including

a Republican-controlled subcommittee, was equally engaged in

making sure.

Now I don’t want to gloss over problems, and we had problems

in 2000.

You certainly have run into some difficulties getting ready for

the 2010 census with the Harris thing and the management problems and so forth. We are all familiar with those. You have already

had your hearings on that. But that is behind us.

The Director has a plan in place right now, but this plan can’t

happen without the three dimensions of funding I just mentioned:

adequacy, timeliness and flexibility.

Flexibility is important. You are going to run into the unexpected, and you have to be able to move money around, to move

personnel around to sort of deal with some of those unexpected circumstances.

I think a fact that is sometimes overlooked about the 2000 census is that, at the end of the day, we returned over $300 million

to the U.S. Treasury. We came in under budget. That is we produced a census, a good census on schedule and under budget. That

would not have happened without really successful cooperation by

the Congress.

So I compliment you on this hearing today. I will be delighted,

of course, to answer questions, but I think your focus on the fact

of what damage the flat funding could do as you enter the 2009 fiscal year is extremely important.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Prewitt follows:]

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Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Dr. Prewitt.

Mr. Raines, you may begin your opening statement.

STATEMENT OF MARVIN RAINES

Mr. RAINES. Chairman Clay, it is an honor and distinct pleasure

to appear before you today to share my thoughts on the impact of

a continuing resolution on the ability of local and regional staff to

conduct a complete and accurate 2010 census.

My testimony today from the perspective gained during my tenure as Associate Director for Field Operations will hopefully provide context for your discussion and deliberations.

There are a number of issues that I feel should be addressed, but

two are the most important for field operations. They are the importance of local census offices and the importance of reaching the

hard to enumerate populations.

Any interruptions of funding, changes in resource or schedule

modifications would negatively impact each of areas as well as others that are mentioned in my written testimony.

A local census office is one of the basic building blocks for all of

field operations. Approximately 500 LCLs must be leased, furnished and staffed for the decennial census. The leasing process is

essential, and the space must meet size, safety, transportation and

local requirements to optimally satisfy the needs of each region.

After a lease is signed, each LCL may require three to 6 months

to become field operational. Each office has electrical, telecommunications, security and special field infrastructure needs and must

pass a comprehensive checklist prior to becoming and being declared operational.

A continuing resolution delaying the opening of LCLs would have

a domino effect throughout all of field operations and would adversely impact the success of the 2010 census.

Another extremely important issue is addressing problems concerned with the historically under-counted. The most likely to be

under-counted are minorities, the poor, individuals living in rural

and urban areas, undocumented immigrants, the transient and

homeless and children.

Those under-counted have been divided into two basic categories:

hard to count and hardest to count. Typically the hard to count are

those considered apathetic, uninformed, misinformed or disinterested in participating. The hardest to count are individuals with

some barrier that prevents them from participating in the census

such as those with language isolation or literacy challenges.

From my census 2000 experience, I learned that the Partnership

Program is one of the most effective means of reaching the hard

to count and the hardest to count. Groundwork, networks and trust

must be established in challenging communities and reestablished

in others to engage the right partner or community leader to join

in efforts to count everyone.

In conclusion, I realize from firsthand experience that planning

and implementing a decennial census is complex, time-consuming

and rewarding.

However, in order to get to the part that is rewarding, you must

endure and work through the complex, challenging and time-consuming parts. To do that, the Census Bureau staff needs adequate

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resources and support to move completely into decennial operations

and programs without delay.

As proud as I am of our work during the 2000 census, I am more

proud of the quality and integrity of the data that was collected.

The public deserves the Bureau’s highest and best service, and

local communities depend on the accuracy and completeness of that

data.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I hope I was able to add another perspective to this hearing. I am available for questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Raines follows:]

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Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Mr. Raines. You do bring an interesting perspective to the hearing.

Dr. Himes, you may finish off the testimony.

STATEMENT OF GLENN HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Good afternoon, Chairman Clay, and thank you for

the opportunity you have given to the MITRE Corp. to update the

committee on the impact of a continuing resolution on operational

plans for the 2010 decennial census.

The MITRE Corp. is a not for profit organization chartered to

work in the public interest. MITRE manages three federally funded

research and development centers: one for the Department of Defense, one for the Federal Aviation Administration and one for the

Internal Revenue Service.

Governed by Part 35.017 of the Federal Acquisition Regulations,

federally funded research and development centers operate in the

public interest with objectivity, independence, freedom from conflict

of interest and full disclosure of their affairs to the respective government sponsors.

It continues to be our privilege to serve with the talented engineers and other professionals who support the Census Bureau in

its efforts to prepare and conduct the 2010 decennial census.

We are pleased to report that since MITRE’s last appearance before this committee on June 11th, the Bureau has demonstrated

continued improvements in managing and overseeing preparations

for the 2010 decennial census. These improvements include an increase in activities to monitor program progress and to identify potential risks.

Some of the highest risks to achieving a successful decennial census pertain to funding. If funding for the decennial census is delayed or insufficient, critical activities may be delayed or reduced

in scope. Delays would increase the risk of accomplishing the census on time. Reductions in scope would increase the risk that the

quality of the census data would not meet the needs of Congress

or the American people.

Finally, insufficient funding would require census managers and

executives to perform substantial replanning and reprioritizing at

a time when their workloads will be growing enormously. We remain committed to helping the Census Bureau prepare for a successful 2010 Decennial.

Thank you for inviting us to this hearing. I will be happy to answer your questions.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much, Dr. Himes.

Director Murdock, please tell the subcommittee what will happen

if the Bureau does not receive adequate for fiscal year 2009 and

what operations will be affected.

Mr. MURDOCK. Let me summarize some of those because there

are many operations that are impacted. Among the majors of those,

of course, is address canvassing which we must open our local offices in order for that to be successful.

It is hard to overemphasize the importance of address canvassing. In many ways the census is a census of addresses from which

we get households from which we get the population that we count

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for the decennial census. That particular operation, therefore, is

critical.

If you do not have a good address canvassing, you are not likely

not to have a good census. So that would be the first major operation that would be impacted.

Also impacted and very importantly would be our Partnership

Program which, as you know, has been important in terms of

reaching the very populations that Mr. Raines referred to, the hard

to count populations.

We are scheduled to have 680 such specialists in place by the beginning of next year. We now have 120. So we would be in the

process of hiring another 560 in this interim period of time. Much

of that would occur after the beginning of fiscal year 2009.

There are certainly many others. We have contracts ongoing for

the operation or control systems, contracts for the handhelds that

will be used in the address canvassing. Nearly all of our major contracts would be negatively impacted, meaning nearly all of our subsequent operations related to the 2010 census would be negatively

impacted.

So virtually all of our ongoing programs would be impacted and,

as indicated, certainly the opening of those local census offices

would be critical. That would not occur without those finances.

Mr. CLAY. That would have a detrimental effect on having an accurate count.

Mr. MURDOCK. Yes.

Mr. CLAY. Let me followup with Dr. Himes on that.

MITRE has done some consulting for the Bureau. Your work has

been helpful in ensuring that proper attention is given to key operations.

We have heard from Dr. Murdock what could happen if the Bureau does not get adequate funding for the census. Now I would

like to get your opinion. What are the implications of not conducting the operations Dr. Murdock cited?

Mr. HIMES. So we would concur with what Dr. Murdock, that the

address canvassing is really one of the key starting points of having a successful, accurate census.

MITRE’s involvement has been especially focused on FDCA, the

Field Data Collection Automation, in recent months. The contracts

to complete the infrastructure, to open the local census offices, to

complete the handheld computers, the software, the testing, the

training could all impacted by this.

FDCA alone has a substantial increase in funding from 2008 to

fiscal year 2009, and obviously, there are other parts of the census

activities as a whole that Dr. Murdock also referred to.

So if they are not able to hire the people and complete the systems to support them, there would most likely be a delay or they

would have to reduce the number of offices that they opened, and

that would then have a very deleterious effect on the quality of the

data.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you for that response.

Mr. Raines, what is the most critical problem facing regional

staff?

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Mr. RAINES. I don’t know if I can actually characterize it as one

problem, but there are a number of different issues. All of them,

I think, are associated with timeliness.

Clearly, now that the new procedure that is one that will involve

pen and paper is going to be used, I like to refer to the testing as

there is a zero gremlin out there somewhere. When I say zero

gremlin, what I am talking about, I remember when we did testing

during the 2000 census.

We could try things out for 100 people or 100 cases or 1,000

cases, 10,000 cases. But somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000,

the zero gremlin would get in there and create problems, and we

would have problems. When we got 100,000 cases, somehow things

would just begin to get problems. So testing is going to be one the

major problems.

Recruiting and the competency of staff is another one of those

issues. Being able to have funding so that we can recruit the proper staff and the competency of that staff is extremely important.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you for that.

Gremlin was a make of a car, I believe.

Mr. RAINES. Well, I am talking about that imaginary person that

gets in there and causes concerns. [Laughter.]

Mr. CLAY. Thank you for that response.

Mr. Prewitt, you are to be commended for the success of the 2000

census, and you stated that the Census Bureau returned $300 million to the U.S. Treasury. I am not sure if that is going to happen

for 2010.

On a serious note, you talk about the proportional under-count.

With the limited time we have, let me ask you, was the proportional under-count consistent in all demographic groups? Did it go

across the board and then how did you determine there was an

over-count and an under-count?

Mr. PREWITT. Right. Very important, Mr. Chairman, and I will

do this quickly. We assessed the magnitude of the under-count two

different ways in 2000. One is what is called demographic analysis,

and the other was an accuracy and coverage evaluation.

Demographic analysis doesn’t allow you to make fine grain decisions about the nature of the under-count, but the coverage evaluation survey did.

What we learned in 2000 is that with exception of the Black population, all other racial groups were almost taken to zero. That is

the American Indian group, the Hispanic and the Asian population

groups, but the African American population was taken down close

to 1 percent under-count. That is from a historic high of 5 percent

earlier in the decade.

We have been progressively doing better on the under-count but

not the differential under-count, and 2000 is the first census where

we made real cutting into the differential under-count.

We only knew that because we did a large followup survey called

the Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation Survey which allowed us to

measure the magnitude of how well we had done on the differential

under-count.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you for that response.

Mr. Yarmuth is recognized.

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Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have one question.

Dr. Prewitt, when you had to prepare for the 2000 census in a

relatively time because of the Supreme Court decision, how would

you evaluate how important funding was in the years leading up

to the census as opposed to the actual year of the census?

Mr. PREWITT. Well, you are quite right. We had a bad patch.

When I got there, we weren’t clear what kind of census we can do.

We didn’t even know for the first 4 or 5 months what kind of census design we would have.

So enormous work had to happen after the Supreme Court decision to reconfigure the apparatus around what we call the traditional census.

However, what we did not have to deal with were the kind of

problems that the Director and Marvin Raines just discussed. The

local offices were open. We were staffing them up. We had an advertising campaign that was ready to go. We had hired the partners.

All of the kind of apparatus we needed to make the new design

work was in place. We had a lot of design work to do, but we did

not have a staffing up preparation.

This is a much worse situation. A flat funding in fiscal year 2009

of even for 3 or 4 or 5 months is a much worse situation than what

we had in 2000 with the Supreme Court delay.

Mr. YARMUTH. I think that is what we are all concerned about.

We are really in a very critical juncture right now, that what we

do now will affect the integrity of the census in 2010. It is clear

that we need to make sure that there are adequate resources right

now.

Mr. PREWITT. Yes. The issue is timeliness more than the amount

right now.

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Yarmuth.

I saw Dr. Himes with this curious look on his face when the bells

were going off. The bells announced the beginning of a series of

votes.

So we will conclude this hearing. It will probably be one of the

shortest in the history of this institution. But I would like to make

one final point before concluding.

As Chair of this subcommittee, I am committed to ensuring that

there is adequate funding in fiscal year 2009 for the Census Bureau to carry out effective and efficient operations for the 2010 decennial census, and I am working with the House leadership to

bring this to fruition.

It is the expectation of this subcommittee that we will have the

full and complete cooperation of the administration, the Commerce

Department and the Census Bureau. This includes being honest

with Congress about operational problems and funding needs before they become catastrophes.

Director Murdock, I trust that we can count on you and your

team to fulfill this obligation.

Mr. MURDOCK. Absolutely, Mr. Chairman, and we are very grateful for your efforts on behalf of the Census Bureau.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much.

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Mr. Yarmuth, if you have any closing remarks.

Mr. YARMUTH. Just that I appreciate all your work and your testimony. It is something that we need to get right, and I appreciate

your input into the discussion.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much.

Without objection, the committee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 2:34 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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