TRI In The News

Troubling to Many, Census Bureau Survey Delivered in Northwoods

September 13, 2011

9/13/2011

TRI IN THE NEWS: TROUBLING TO MANY, CENSUS BUREAU SURVEY DELIVERED IN NORTHWOODS

From The Lakeland Times

It might not be the first time it has been delivered in the Northwoods - and it certainly won't be the last - but the Census Bureau's American Community Survey is arriving at randomly picked homes in the Northwoods, and it has a number of people crying foul.

Not only does the survey pose a series of highly personal questions, those selected to answer them have no choice but to do so - the survey is compelled by federal law. The Census Bureau can levy fines of $100 for each unanswered question, $500 for a falsely answered question, and up to $5,000 in total fines.

What's more, the questions have to be answered for every household member. About 250,000 people receive the 75-question survey every month on a rolling, random basis.

A Texas lawmaker has meanwhile introduced a bill to make the survey optional, except for four basic requests, the name of the principal resident, contact information, date of response, and the number of people living or staying at the same address.

Republican Rep. Ted Poe offered the bill March 3. It has attracted 27 cosponsors, including GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul; fellow candidate Michele Bachmann cosponsored an identical bill with Poe in 2009.

No Wisconsin lawmakers have signed onto the current proposal, which has been referred to the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, but various groups - such as the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) - have issued action alerts for their members to contact legislators to discuss the measure.

"HSLDA has long been concerned about the level of personal information collected and the invasiveness of the American Community Survey," wrote Melanie Palazzo, the group's Congressional Action program director, on its website. "We are grateful to Congressman Poe for introducing H.R. 931 and giving the American people control of what personal information they share with the government."

So what do they ask?

Federal officials want citizens to share a lot more information than they did way back in 1790 during the nation's first census.

That census contained six questions; the current survey gallops along at 28 pages, and the nosiness runs the gamut from questions about daily routines to the number of vehicles kept on the property. It is not even the once-a-decade census but a yearly supplement designed to mine ever more personal information.

Among other things, the government wants to know the exact relationship of everyone in the household, whether they are spouses, or siblings, or children or foster children, or roommates, or unmarried partners or other non-relatives.

Officials also want to know what race people are and whether they are of Latino, Hispanic or Spanish origin. As for the house (or apartment, condo, or mobile home), the government wants to know when it was built and how many acres the property has. They need to know how many rooms the house has, and, beyond that, how many bedrooms.

If a respondent lives in a condominium, what's the condominium fee? If he or she rents, what's the monthly rent? The government wants to know not just how much money people make, but whether anybody in the household is on food stamps or have been temporarily absent from their jobs recently.

Here are a few other questions the government wants answered:

• Does the house have a flush toilet? A sink with faucet? Hot and cold running water? Telephone service?

• Is the respondent deaf or have trouble hearing? Is he or she blind, or have trouble seeing even when wearing glasses?

• How many times have the people in the household been married? When was the last time?

• Does anybody have difficulty dressing themselves, or running errands, and, if so, who are they?

• How do the people in the household get to work, and what time in the morning do they leave for work? How many people travel with them to work?

• If household members are unemployed, are they looking for work? If they are employed, who's the employer? What kind of work are they doing for what company?

The questions go on and on, and Poe says they go on way too much.

"After learning how intrusive the questions in the survey are, I feel that it is important that the Census Bureau stick to counting people and not intrude into the personal lives of the American people," Poe said when he introduced the bill in 2009. "The primary purpose of the census is to enumerate our population, not inquire how much you pay for your utilities, if you have emotional problems or if you had a job last week. This legislation will eliminate these types of irrelevant questions and ensure our right to personal privacy."

Bachmann, his co-sponsor then, agreed.

"Under the U.S. Constitution, a count of the nation's population is required to be conducted every 10 years," Bachmann said. "This is not only a legitimate purpose, but essential in order to apportion representatives in Congress and direct taxes. But throughout the years, additional questions of a more personal nature were added so that the federal government could have more detailed information to make and implement its ever-expanding public policy."

Bachmann said many Americans had real concerns about the ultimate protection of sensitive personal information.

The Republican National Committee joined the chorus of criticism a year ago, saying the Census Bureau was acting like a scam artist.

"Many of these questions seek information we are warned never to divulge to a stranger, but the Census Bureau acts exactly as a scam artist would, asking very personal questions and using fear of penalties to manipulate the respondent to answer," a RNC resolution passed in August 2010 states.

"(T)he Census Bureau has used tactics such as harassing letters, phone calls, agent visits and even questioning neighbors to get information about respondents."

History and legal authority

According to the Census Bureau, the survey was intended to replace the long form the bureau had used in past censuses.

"The nationwide American Community Survey (ACS) is a critical element of the Census Bureau's reengineered decennial census program," the agency states on its website. "During previous decennial censuses, most households received a short-form questionnaire, while one household in six received a long form that contained additional questions and provided more detailed socioeconomic information about the population."

In 2010, for the first time, the Census Bureau conducted a short-form survey only, counting all residents living in the United States and asking for name, sex, age, date of birth, race, ethnicity, relationship and housing tenure.

The more detailed socioeconomic information once collected with the long-form questionnaire was transferred to the American Community Survey. The survey provides current data about all communities every year, rather than once every 10 years.

But it's the annual mandatory collection of data that prompts critics to contend that the Census Bureau has overstepped it constitutional authority.

The decennial census itself certainly has constitutional legitimacy. In Article 1, Section 2, the Constitution sets out its purpose: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct."

Later amendments clarify citizenship and allow an income tax without apportionment, but the purpose of enumeration remains intact, critics say. To them, the census is designed for one purpose and one purpose only, to attain a head count of the population with enough information to establish apportioned federal political boundaries.

Critics say, too, the constitution clearly limits the count to every 10 years.

Supporters say broad socioeconomic data is critical for governmental decision making, and in fact the House Commerce Oversight Subcommittee cited that very reason in 1992 when it directed the bureau to collect annual demographic information. Timely information allows for fairer, more accurate administration of federal programs, supporters of the survey say, not to mention the distribution of billions of federal dollars.

Critics counter that the need for more data grows with the addition of big-government federal programs.

In the years since the constitution was adopted, federal case law has come to side with survey supporters, and has done so for 140 years.

In 1870, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote: "The Constitution orders an enumeration of free persons in the different states every ten years. The direction extends no further Yet Congress has repeatedly directed an enumeration not only of free persons in the States but of free persons in the Territories, and not only an enumeration of persons but the collection of statistics respecting age, sex, and production. Who questions the power to do this?"

Well, John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, for one.

"Article I of the U.S. Constitution makes it clear that the census should be taken every ten years for the sole purpose of congressional redistricting," Whitehead wrote in 2004. "What the founders intended was a simple head count of the number of people living in a given area so that numerically equal congressional districts can be maintained. The founders never envisioned or authorized the federal government to continuously demand, under penalty of law, detailed information from the American people."

That same year Ron Paul agreed.

"The founders never authorized the federal government to continuously survey the American people," he wrote. "More importantly, they never envisioned a nation where the people would roll over and submit to every government demand. The American Community Survey is patently offensive to all Americans who still embody that fundamental American virtue, namely a healthy mistrust of government. The information demanded in the new survey is none of the government's business, and the American people should insist that Congress reject it now before it becomes entrenched."