Bipartisan Census Funding Will Help Ensure Everyone is Counted

Census News 12.19,19

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Kenny Yi, [email protected], 202-466-2735

WASHINGTON – Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference Education Fund, issued the following statement on the passage of “minibus” legislation that provides the U.S. Census Bureau with full-year funding for the 2020 Census for Fiscal Year 2020: 

“We are grateful to congressional leaders and all lawmakers for their bipartisan effort to ensure sufficient funding for the 2020 Census before year’s end. The Census Bureau can now launch peak operations next month with robust, full-year funding to help ensure everyone is counted, as the Constitution requires. The Census Counts campaign can now turn its full attention to ensuring communities that have been traditionally missed in the census get the resources and representation they deserve. We could all lose out over the next decade if the Census Bureau doesn’t get the 2020 Census right.”

Background:

The Census Bureau is now positioned to deploy effective field, communications, and cybersecurity operations, and we urge the administration to allow flexible, timely spending on expanded activities designed to reach hard-to-count population groups in every state, as Congress directed. A fair and accurate census guides vital federal resources to states, localities, and households for health care, schools, improved transportation and transit, job training, economic development, and housing.

The Leadership Conference Education Fund builds public will for federal policies that promote and protect the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States. The Education Fund’s campaigns empower and mobilize advocates around the country to push for progressive change in the United States. It was founded in 1969 as the education and research arm of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. For more information on The Education Fund, visit civilrights.org/edfund/.

Census Counts is a collaborative campaign involving more than 15 national organizations and dozens of community partners in more than 30 states working together to make sure that the 2020 Census is fair and accurate—so that our communities do not miss out on the political power they deserve and the resources their communities have earned. More information about The Education Fund’s Census Counts campaign is available at censuscounts.org.