Don't end the Census early!

Unlike the Post Office, the census is quiet but incredibly important for legislative district lines and funding for everything from health care to kids' school lunches to infrastructure investments. Ending the census a month early in a pandemic stinks of politics. This will lead to an undercount of traditionally hard to count communities. I agree with an Inspector General monitoring the proposed schedules and assessing their impact on the accuracy of the count, and I demand that the census not end until Oct. 31. A bipartisan group of 48 senators have called for an extension of the census. The census bureau itself asked for more time earlier this year. Instead, suspiciously, the census was announced last week to be ending a month early. This defies logic. As of last week, slightly more than 63% of households had responded to the census. Thinking we can cover over thirty percent of non - responders in the 45 days before the new deadline is ridiculous. Some states, happily, have invested in getting an accurate count. California has put $187 million into outreach efforts. Texas, however, has put zero. The census only comes around once a decade. Sabotaging it is incredibly cruel and short - sighted.

First sent on August 17, 2020 by Gina