Representative Carolyn Maloney, DN.Y., the current chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, who will be shown here in 2018, has introduced a bill to try to protect the investigation. 2030 census and other future head counts from political interference.
Andrew Harnik / AP
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Andrew Harnik / AP
Representative Carolyn Maloney, DN.Y., the current chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, who will be shown here in 2018, has introduced a bill to try to protect the investigation. 2030 census and other future head counts from political interference.
Andrew Harnik / AP
A bill introduced Monday in the US House of Representatives could help avoid the 2030 census and upcoming head of state counts. years of intervention by the administration of former President Donald Trump verified the country’s most recent tally.
If it becomes law, receipt would put an additional barrier against any attempt by the administration to interfere with the next decade-long census, which is used to divide political representation and federal funding among communities. copper across the United States
The proposal, led by Representative Carolyn Maloney – a New York Democrat who chairs the House Oversight and Reform Committee that helps oversee the Census Bureau – comes after the Trump administration raised the issue. expose the risks of incomplete and inaccurate census of the country’s population in 2020 with it being failed to advance a previously untested census question about U.S. citizenship and install political appointees with no apparent qualifications at the office, among other unusual moves.
“It basically moves to make sure that the census is fair and accurate, that it’s removed from political influence, and that decisions are made based on science and not politics. “, Maloney told NPR.
Below Fair and Accurate Census Guarantee ActThe number of political appointees allowed at the office, the federal government’s largest statistical agency with about 4,285 employees, will be limited to three, including the agency’s director.
The president would be allowed to remove a director – who can currently only serve no more than two five-year terms – “for the sole reason of inefficiency, neglect of duties, or failure of term,” according to the legislative text. . And if there were no directors in place, there would be a succession plan involving only top career civil servants.
The bill also specifies that only the agency’s director can make operational, statistical or technical decisions for totals once a decade, and that the agency can have only one deputy director. “single” director, who will be a career civil servant appointed by the director.
To try to stave off another citizenship issue, the head of the Government Accountability Office will have to consider whether all questions for the upcoming census have been “researched, learned, and studied.” and check against established statistical policies and procedures.”
The bill would also require the congressional reporting office to estimate the five-year cost of its work, as well as provide a biennial report on the status of plans for the upcoming census.
Two additional committees of external advisors – one to review statistical quality standards and another to focus specifically on the 2030 census and the American Community Survey of office, the country’s largest survey – will be established.
In the Trump Administration, Plans for a 2020 Census Advisory Committee stopped despite the concerns of many census stakeholders.
With the midterm elections in November coming up and no Senate version of the bill yet, it’s unclear whether the Democratic-controlled Congress will be able to pass the legislation during this session.
Maloney noted that other priorities, including gun control and prescription drug prices, force the measure to stay high.
“You can’t do everything at once, so we ended up doing it,” Maloney said.
When asked if she feels pressured when the bill is passed later this year, Maloney replied: “Yes. I certainly hope that we have House Democrats and Senate Democrats, but you do. never know in an election. And I don’t think the Republican Party will support this bill, but I can’t speak for them. They haven’t supported them in the past.”
Over the years, Maloney introduced the bill that would make the office, now part of the Commerce Department, an independent agency — a strategy her latest census bill avoids.
“I know neither the Republican nor the Democratic administrations are in favor of it being completely independent, so we have it in the Commerce Department but with strict guidelines, rules, regulations,” Maloney said. and added that she was “satisfied” that the new measure would make the office “more independent than before.”
