On Friday, 15 July 2011, the director of the U.S. Census Bureau posted on his blog an important message, The Consequences of Budget Cuts. Like other bureaus, agencies, and departments, the Census Bureau faces substantial budget cuts for Fiscal Year 2012. Census Director Robert Groves describes the extent and impact of proposed cuts on the federal statistical products we all use:

As the country continues to debate about its fiscal future, the budget spotlight this week came to focus on the Census Bureau. We began developing our Fiscal Year 2012 budget last spring. In formulating that budget, we reviewed our existing economic and demographic statistics programs and determined that we needed to terminate a number of existing programs such as the Current Industrial Reports program, the Statistical Abstract, and our foreign demographic analysis program to mention a few, in order to fund higher priority programs. …

Director Groves goes on to describe the extent of proposed cut’s to the Census Bureau budget. He concludes:

We too are taxpayers, and we greatly appreciate these are difficult fiscal times. That is why we took steps to shrink our budget and find efficiencies that would not put our major, key surveys at risk. I will be writing more here as our funding legislation works its way through Congress.

You can follow developments at http://blogs.census.gov/directorsblog/. Several previous Director’s posts describe the steps that the Census Bureau has been taking in response to expectations of significant cuts.

Previous SLA-DGI blog post: Proposed Census Cuts Include Statistical Abstract, 21 March 2011.

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