Last week the GOP-led House of Representatives voted to end the American Community Survey, or ACS, the Census Bureau\u2019s annual study of U.S. socioeconomic conditions. The largely party-line vote defied the advice of conservative think tank experts, the interests of the business community, and, most critically, common sense.<\/p>\n
Data from the 21-page questionnaire are used to help the government best determine how to distribute federal assistance dollars, including Medicaid benefits, and federal grants to states and communities\u2014more than $800 billion in grants and benefits in fiscal year 2008 alone.<\/p>\n
Eliminating the ACS \u201cwould cause massive disruptions in the federal government\u201d because many formula-funded programs use ACS data in their calculations, George Washington University professor Andrew Reamer told an Atlantic magazine blog last week.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Business Economists strongly support the American Community Survey, as do individual businesses like Target.<\/p>\n
\u201cCensus data is really the only source of information that can give us neighborhood-level data,\u201d said Joan Naymark, Target\u2019s director of market analytics and planning, in a video exploring how the company uses ACS data.<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s eating opponents of the ACS?<\/p>\n