This past week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that contains the Census Bureau’s budget. This bill includes several cuts which would impact several datasets including the Economic Census and the American Community Survey (ACS), datasets which provides key economic, population, and housing data critical for planning, analysis and decision making by state and federal agencies, non-profit organizations, private industry, businesses, and researchers.

With the 2010 Census not including a long form, the American Community Survey is THE source for detailed income, poverty, and population data. If the American Community Survey is no longer available, critical datasets for planning, analysis and decision making will no longer available, leaving a great void in data needed for informed decision making in the private and public sectors.

Please take a few moments to review the following link includes a blog post from Dr. Robert Groves, U.S. Census Director, to learn more about how this bill could drastically alter data collection in this country. http://directorsblog.blogs.census.gov/2012/05/11/a-future-without-key-social-and-economic-statistics-for-the-country/

Included below is a brief video from Dr. Robert Groves about the impact this bill could have on data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau.