GOP Addresses Public’s Census Concerns

House Republican leaders said Thursday that they were surprised by how many Americans think the census long form intrudes on their privacy and promised to get rid of the multi-question document before the next census in 2010.

“This whole privacy thing is a phenomenon--because of financial privacy, medical privacy,” Rep. Dan Miller (R-Fla.), chairman of the census subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee, said at a news conference. GOP leaders used the news conference to plead with Americans to fill out the forms that help determine how the federal government distributes $185 billion each year.

Suddenly, privacy is “a much greater issue” than the Census Bureau planners had realized, Miller said.

Caught in a squeeze between their desire to get as much federal largesse as possible for their districts and the anti-government mood of many constituents, the Republican leaders opted for uneasy compromise: Fill out the top.

People angry with alleged intrusiveness of the long form “can fill out the first six questions and send it in. That helps, because it allows people to be counted,” said Rep. J.C. Watts Jr. (R-Okla.), chairman of the House Republican Conference.

The first questions on the long form are identical to those on the short form. They ask for the name, age, sex, relationship, race and, if they are Latino, origin of people at an address and inquire whether the home is owned or rented.

There are an estimated 120 million households in the United States, and 20 million of them were selected at random to receive the long form. Its 53 questions cover such varied topics as education, ancestry, number of bathrooms, occupation and income. One question was added since the 1990 census: if grandparents are raising their grandchildren.

The government considers the long form vital to get a statistical snapshot of the American people. Its details help in planning everything from where to build new roads and hospitals to which schools should get extra funds because they have large numbers of poor children. Marketers in private business and real estate developers avidly await the details to shape their business planning.

Much to the surprise of census officials, who point out that the long form has fewer questions than at any time since it was first used in 1940, congressional offices are receiving many complaints. The worry is particularly intense in some rural districts, where as many as one in two households received the long form, because a large number of responses is needed to get a valid statistical sample.

“We got caught in the cross fire” of growing fears about privacy in the age of the Internet,” Census Director Kenneth Prewitt told a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing Thursday.

If people with a long form follow Watts’ suggestion and answer only the first six questions, their answers will be considered incomplete, a Census Bureau spokesman said Thursday. They will get phone calls and follow-up visits from census takers trying to get answers to the other questions. Without completed long forms, the census cannot gather enough information for a reliable survey, the spokesman said.

The long form will not be used on a mass basis in the next census, according to current census planning, Prewitt indicated. Instead, under a new procedure starting in 2001, about 3 million Americans each year will be asked to fill out long-form questionnaires.

Census Bureau officials and members of Congress hope that the use of smaller groups on a rotating basis will help make it easier to explain and defend the information-gathering process. They hope that will defuse the unexpected burst of irritation and anger over the current census.

While appealing for cooperation, the Republican leaders said at the news conference that the census should be less burdensome.

“We think every American city, every county, every township, ought to work to . . . encourage [people] to fill out the census [form],” said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).