Plan to cut major Census survey draws outcry

New Jersey.com reports:

Every winter the president introduces his budget for the next year, Congress votes on budget resolutions, and the populace complains about this or that funding cut.

This year a group not known for its take-to-the-streets tendencies is making its own kind of noise about the Bush Administration's plan to eliminate a U.S. Census Bureau survey that has been a stalwart for information on the use and effectiveness of government programs, and the income and poverty of American families.

Headed for the gallows is the 22-year-old Survey of Income and Program Participation, known as SIPP, which the Census Bureau says at $40 million is too expensive to keep and is being cut in order to fund higher priority programs, including the 2010 Census.

"We had a critical need in planning for the 2010 Census and we didn't want to put it at risk," said Howard Hogan, associate director for demographic programs at the bureau.

Survey advocates say this is not a matter of social policy wonks getting their dander up over the life cycle of obscure datasets, but a cause for real concern for the nation's poor. The SIPP tracks people for two to four years, and asks detailed questions about, among other things, their sources of income, health care and ways they use the federal programs.

Survey users say the in-depth, long-term information SIPP provides on issues like welfare reform, health insurance for children, and unemployment compensation's effects on finding a new job are invaluable to improving government programs and understanding the cycle of when and why people use the programs and when and why they stop.

The Social Security Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Food and Nutrition Service program in the United States Department of Agriculture all use the SIPP for policy analysis.

The new SIPP budget for fiscal year 2007, which begins Oct. 1, would plunge $24.6 million to $9.2 million. Of the new amount, $3.6 million would be allotted for collecting SIPP data through September 2006 from participants who started in 2004, and $5.6 million would be slated for developing a new survey.

And so to the streets -- which in this case means writing letters and getting out the word -- go researchers, economists and social welfare organizations determined to save the SIPP.

Tomorrow, the Secretary of commerce, the Census Bureau director and members of the two Congressional appropriations committees, among others, will receive a letter signed by at least 130 organizations asking for the SIPP funding to be restored. The Association for Children of New Jersey, New Jersey Citizen Action, the American Association of People with Disabilities and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees are among those who signed.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal economic and social policy think-tank in Washington, D.C., wrote the letter. This is its second. The first was sent March 2 and signed by 432 researchers, including two Nobel laureates in economics.

Both liberal and conservative scholars signed that letter.

Look at the coalition to "study" the poor.It's rather amazing.