Excerpt from Status of Planning for the 2000 Census: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Census, Statistics and Postal Personnel of the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service House of Representatives, One Hundred Third Congress, Second Session, January 26, 1994 Wednesday, January 26, 1994 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Census, Statistics and Postal Personnel, Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, Washington, D C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:36 a. m., in room 311, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Thomas C. Sawyer (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Members present: Representatives Sawyer and Wynn. Mr. Sawyer. Good morning. Welcome to the latest installation of what my ranking member has come to call "census seminars." Today we would like to talk about the Census Bureau's recent report. The Appropriations Committee asked for the report because of its continued concern about the scope and the pace of the planning efforts. The primary testing of that planning effort and the preparation for the next census will take place in a year. At the last hearing we took a look at whether the plans addressed the concerns that we have heard expressed throughout the Congress about accuracy and cost. The Bureau is going to have to cover a lot of ground in a very short period of time. So, toward that end, we wanted to look today at how things are going and whether there are legislative changes that might be needed. The Department of Commerce is considering whether or not any laws will need to be changed to allow use of sampling in the census. I have a sense, at least from a lay position, that there is unanimity among lower courts that title 13 unequivocally permits the use of sampling so long as it is in addition to more traditional counting techniques, to improve the accuracy of the final numbers, rather than to purely supplement the use of those traditional techniques. To that end, my sense is that it probably doesn't justify tampering with the law that has been interpreted in detail to this point. But the truth is that we all face lawsuits, the Bureau faces many challenges and it has got to move quickly. So, for each of the proposed legislative initiatives, I hope that we are going to be able to look in some detail as to how that might improve the count. In any case, we are pleased to have with us again today Dr. Harry A. Scarr, who is the Acting Director of the Census Bureau, and Mr. William Hunt, the Director of Federal Management Issues, General Government Division, General Accounting Office. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.