ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline
Volume 14, Number 65
July 12, 2005

In This Issue: Ask the Senate Appropriators to Support the Census 
Bureau

The Senate is scheduled to consider the FY 2006 Commerce, Justice, 
and Science appropriations bill, which funds the U.S. Census 
Bureau.  Currently, the bill would allocate $727.4 million for the 
Census Bureau -  approximately $85 million below the amount 
approved by the House of Representatives last month, $150 million 
below the Bush Administration's request, and less than the bureau 
received in Fiscal Year 2005.

If your Senator is on the Commerce, Justice, & Science 
Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, please call 
him/her and ask for support of the House-passed funding.

There is concern that, as the Bureau has ruled out fixing errors 
in the decennial Census by statistical methods, cuts in funding 
will preclude the only other method of fixing errors - paying for 
feet on the ground to check and make corrections. 

If the funding proposed by the Senate prevails, the Census Bureau 
has stated it would make serious cuts to programs such as: the 
Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population 
Survey (used to detect year-to-year change in the official poverty 
rate and other measures of well-being);  several economic 
statistics programs; the Survey of Income and Program 
Participation; testing of content for the 2007 Economic Census; 
and the American Community Survey. The Bureau has also said that 
they would cancel the 2006 census field tests planned for Travis 
County, Texas and the Cheyenne Indian Reservation in South Dakota 
(which are intended to provide opportunities to study improved 
methods for enumerating American Indian reservations ), a  dual 
language (English-Spanish) questionnaire, and a targeted second 
mailing to unresponsive households..

Commerce, Justice, & Science Subcommittee of the Senate 
Appropriations Committee

 Republicans: (8)
• Richard Shelby (AL)
• Judd Gregg (NH)
• Ted Stevens (AK)
• Pete Domenici (NM)
• Mitch McConnell (KY)
• Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX)
• Sam Brownback (KS)
• Christopher Bond (MO) 

Democrats: (7)
• Barbara Mikulski (MD)
• Daniel Inouye (HI)
• Patrick Leahy (VT)
• Herbert Kohl (WI)
• Patty Murray (WA)
• Tom Harkin (IA)
• Byron Dorgan (ND) 



******
ALAWON (ISSN 1069-7799) is a free, irregular publication of the 
American Library Association Washington Office. All materials 
subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be 
reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with 
appropriate credits.

To subscribe to ALAWON, send the message: subscribe ala-wo 
[your_firstname] [your_lastname] to listproc@ala.org or go to 
http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon.  To unsubscribe to ALAWON, send 
the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org. ALAWON 
archives at http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. 

ALA Washington Office, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 403, 
Washington, D.C. 20004-1701; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 
toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; Web site: 
http://www.ala.org/washoff.  Executive Director: Emily Sheketoff. 
Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Don 
Essex, Joshua Farrelman, Erin Haggerty, Patrice McDermott and 
Miriam Nisbet. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick 
Weingarten, Director; Carrie Lowe, Kathy Mitchell, Carrie Russell. 
ALAWON Editor: Bernadette Murphy.