Senator Kay Hagan Airport Traffic Control Tower

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, there is a lot going on in America right now. We are in the middle of a pandemic where we have lost over 200,000 people. We have millions who are unemployed. We are only 34 days away from a Presidential election. It is easy to see that a lot of Americans could have missed the fact that we are also in the middle of a decennial census.

Under article I, section 2 of the Constitution, since 1790, the United States has conducted a census every 10 years. The U.S. Census Bureau is currently executing the 2020 decennial census. As we speak, census workers are conducting interviews and filling out survey forms in every community in our country despite the tremendous obstacles that have been posed by COVID-19. Their work is of utmost importance. I want to take this opportunity to thank them for their very challenging efforts.

The 2020 census will dictate apportionment of the House of Representatives for the next decade. In addition, Federal programs rely on census data to distribute more than $1.5 trillion in funding every year to States, localities, individuals, and businesses. So the stakes are high for the census, and we have only one chance to get it right-- one chance every 10 years.

As the vice chair of the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, I have worked with Members on both sides of the aisle to ensure that the Census Bureau has the resources it needs to ensure a complete and accurate 2020 census. This includes securing, for the past several fiscal years, the entire amount that was requested by the administration, including reserve funding, which has been critical to meet the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, in addition to funding, the Census needs sufficient time to get the job done right. To protect public health, on April 13, 2020, Census Director Steven Dillingham and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced that the Census Bureau would delay field operations by 3 months and they asked Congress to delay reporting apportionment and redistricting counts by 4 months in order to ``ensure the completeness and accuracy of the 2020 Census.'' That was Census Director Dillingham and Commerce Secretary Ross. Under this revised plan, the largest and most important field data collection operation to follow up with households that have been nonresponsive would run until October 31. On a bipartisan basis, this request from the administration was welcomed. We want to give the Census both the time and the resources that it needs to do the job right.

Over the course of the summer, the Trump administration installed new political appointees at the Census, and a number of reports indicated that the Trump administration was looking to rush the 2020 decennial census operations so that Secretary Ross--despite what he said to us last spring--could transmit the apportionment counts to the President by December 31, 2020.

Then, on August 3--just last month, August 3--Census Director Dillingham announced that 2020 field data collection and self-response operations would be shortened by a month, ending today, September 30. This decision to curtail operations was not based on the advice of career Census Bureau experts. Census data collection operations are incredibly complicated even under the best of conditions, but their complexity is greatly exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, this spring, experts made clear that a 4-month delay of statutory deadlines was necessary.

In May, Tim Olson, Director for Field Operations for the 2020 decennial census, stated:

We have passed the point where we could even meet the current legislative requirement of December 31. We can't do that anymore.

That was back in May.

After the truncated data collection operations were announced, a career official stated:

It's going to be impossible to complete the count in time. I'm very fearful we're going to have a massive undercount.

I share this fear. I am deeply concerned that cutting short data collection and processing operations during a global pandemic will necessitate changes that will be detrimental to the accuracy and completeness of the 2020 decennial census. In particular, I am concerned that the Census Bureau will reduce the number of attempts to count households and significantly increase the use of less accurate data collection methods. This could lead to a substantial undercount in historically hard-to-count areas. Those areas include Native American, rural, and immigrant communities. An undercount would mean that these communities would be left disenfranchised, without proper political representation and without millions of dollars of Federal funding.

We should be clear about the gravity of this outcome. This would be a constitutional crisis that further undermines faith in our governing institutions.

I called for the Department of Commerce inspector general to investigate why the Trump administration suddenly curtailed data collection operations. I have also requested that the Government Accountability Office conduct an investigation into how this rushed timeline could affect data quality and the overall completeness of the census count.

Last week, the Commerce inspector general released a preliminary report, finding what we already knew: that the decision to accelerate the 2020 census schedule was not made by the experts at the Census Bureau and that rushed schedule increases the risk to the accuracy of the 2020 census.

In particular, the report raises that the curtailed timeline does not provide schedule flexibility in the case of natural disasters. Unfortunately, over the last month, we have seen record wildfires out West and several hurricanes in the gulf. This has delayed operations in those regions.

The GAO came to a similar conclusion, publishing a report last month that found that cutting the timeframe for the 2020 census could increase the risk of an inaccurate count. One line from the inspector general's report really stuck with me. It said:

A statutory extension would permit the Bureau to adhere, as closely as practicable, to the 2020 Census plan it developed over a decade instead of the replan it developed over a weekend.

I hope my colleagues will review these reports. I know everybody is anxious to go home. I am anxious to go home. But I hope people will review these reports and join me in providing the Census Bureau the time the agency needs.

This last-minute attempt to shorten data collection and data processing isn't surprising, sadly. The Trump administration has made other attempts to manipulate the count for political gain. It has been well documented that political operatives have pushed the administration and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to include a citizenship question as part of the 2020 census and in an attempt to reduce participation in immigrant communities. Ultimately, Secretary Ross's attempt to include a citizenship question was rejected by the Supreme Court.

We can't let these latest attempts to undermine the accuracy of the constitutionally mandated count succeed.

Last week, a Federal court issued an injunction preventing the Census Bureau from ramping down operations prematurely because there would be irreparable harm to communities from rushing the count. However, this could just be temporary. In defying the court, earlier this week, the Census Bureau announced a mere 5-day delay so that operations will now end on October 5. This is not long enough. The Census Bureau has also announced plans to appeal the court's injunction.

This is not solely a rural or an urban issue, a red State or a blue State problem. I hope my colleagues will listen to this because the States with the lowest percentage of households counted are Alabama, Louisiana, Montana, South Carolina, Mississippi--Senator Wicker--and Georgia. Some of these States are on the bubble of gaining or losing Representatives, so an undercount, which is a real risk if operations are rushed and shut down prematurely, would have serious repercussions.

That is why I call on my colleagues to pass a 4-month extension of the Census's statutory deadlines so that the Trump administration is compelled to stick to the timeline it had originally announced. Congress already missed an opportunity to address this issue as part of the continuing resolution.

Again, there is bipartisan support for this extension, with a bipartisan bill filed. In addition, last month, a bipartisan group of 48 Senators sent a letter to Senate and House leadership that called for the inclusion of legislation to extend the statutory deadlines as part of the next coronavirus relief package, as the House has done in the updated Heroes Act that was released recently. We should also ensure that the data collection operations, including nonresponse followup and self-response, continue through October 31.

It is imperative for the census to count every person in the United States and where one lives. This includes communities that have had historically low participation in decennial censuses. The census is too important to allow meddling for political gain. We must take action immediately to ensure that the Census Bureau takes the time to get it right.

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