equality." saturday on american history tv at 12:55 p.m. eastern, remembering the life and legacy of william f. buckley jr., the tv personality, political activist and founder of the "national review" who died in 2008. at 8:00 p.m. on "presidency," the relationship between george washington and native americans is examined by author collin callaway in his book "the indian world of george washington: the first president, the first americans and the birth of the nation." and now a conversation on preparations for the 2020 census hosted by georgetown university law center here in washington, d.c. this is about an hour 15 minutes. >> all right. why don't we go ahead and get started? hello, everyone, and for our guests, welcome to georgetown law. as you know, we're here today to

learn about the challenges facing census 2020. the constitution mandates the census for the purposes of apportioning representation in the house of representatives. during the first congress, james madison who was then a congressman representing virginia recognized that the census allowed for data-driven decisions. he encouraged congress to add questions to the census so congress could debate and decide on facts instead of assertions and conjecture. today, we have a highly esteemed panel to speak about these challenges and some of the consequences of the enumeration. first, we have director john h. thompson. he's the executive director of the council of professional associations on federal statistics also known as copas. director thompson has more than

30 years of experience working in statistical and ethical positions at the u.s. census bureau including at its top posts. from august 2013 to june 2017, he served as the censusbureau's director. he served the people for 27 years from 1975 through 2002 in various positions at the census bureau. including as associate director. in addition to his career at the census bureau, director thompson held multiple other positions of distinction. he served for five years as president and ceo of norc at the university of chicago. he was a member of the committee on national statistics at the national academy of sciences. as part of his work on the committee, he served on two panels related to the 2010 seven suss. he participated as a member of the cn stat panel and design of the 2010 census program of evaluations and experiments and

on the panel reviewing the 2020 cens census. terriann lowenthal is an expert on all things consensus. spent 14 years as a congressional aide, including eight years from 1987 through 1994 as staff director of the house census and population subcommittee. since leaving the hill, terriann has remained engaged in census issues. she's served on the 2008 obama presidential transition team, advising on census and federal statistical activities. she advises a wide range of census stakeholders on policy and operational issues including philanthropy, civil rights advocates, state and local government, and business and industry data users. importantly, she is an alumna of georgetown university law center so let me say welcome back to terriann.

professor indivar dutta-gupta, he also serves as an adjunct professor of law. indi is co-author of "counting everyone in the digital age: the implications of technology use in the 2020 die senall census" which can be found on the tables outside and online. prior to joining georgetown law, indi held positions as a congressional aide and with multiple policy organizations. he served as a professional staff on the house ways & means committee, with d.c. hunger solutions and the center for american progress. later he became senior policy adviser at the center on budget and policy priorities. indi also serves on the national academy of social insurances board of directors and member of the hhs see poverty employment and self-sufficiency network. finally, professor joshua geltzer serves as founding

executive director of tat georgn law we he's also a visit -- excuse me, he's also a visiting professor of law. joshua led a team authoring a letter recently to secretary wilbur ross highlighting constitutional and statutory issues with the administration's failure to fill top leadership positions at the census bureau. prior to joining georgetown law, joshua served as senior director for counterterrorism at the national security council staff, having served previously as counsel to the assistant attorney general for national security at the u.s. department of justice. joshua also served as law clerk to justice steven brian of the u.s. supreme court and was editor in chief of "yale law journal." thank you very much for participating on the panel today and welcome to george town. why don't we go ahead and get started with director john h. thompson, if you wouldn't mind. leading things off.

>> thank you, john. i'd like to do three things. talk about why the census is so important, talk a little bit about what's different with the 2020 census as opposed to previous censuses, and then lay the groundwork by saying where we are now. i think my fellow panelists will more than cover much more details about that. so why is the census important? we've already heard it's the basis for reapportioning the congress every ten years. that's a constitutional mandate. the data from the census are used to support fair redistricting and every state uses those data, although not every state is required to. the census results are used to allocate over $600 billion, with a "b," in federal funding, federal funding, every year. the private sector relies on census data and the american community survey in making a

number of decisions about where to put facilities, how to hire, et cetera, et cetera, but basically it drives private sector investment and growth and very importantly, every data collection activity for the most part that's done in the united states that's based on collecting data from household or population surveys like the american community survey, the national health interview sur y survey, the current population survey, which puts out the month-to-month estimates of unemployment. all those surveys are made very accurate by the controls that are used by the census. the dicennial census is why they're so accurate. that's why there is a lot of concern about a potential for an undercount in the census because an undercount in the census or lack of representation of a population group would not just affect the immediate uses like

apportionment and redistricting or fund allocation but would be with us for ten years in the data and that lack of representation would carry through. that's why it's so important to get the 2020 census right. so what's different about the 2020 census? so to talk about that, you have to understand the basic census process until today was essentially starteded in the 1970 census, meant you prepared an address list, you mailed out a questionnaire to every household on the address list. the questionnaires got mailed back. information was collected electronically off those questionnaires and then the most expensive and drift part of the census took place and that was going out to collect the information from those that did not mail back or self-respond. that operation was paper and pencil and has been paper and pencil until this census.

so for this census, the census bureau's looking at primarily three different innovations to take the census. the first is in terms of preparing the address list, they don't have to walk the entire country anymore to update the address list because of the advent of a plethora of geospaci a, geospacial tools and materials. believe me, if there's doubt about a complete list, the sen s suss bureau will go out and look at it in person. the other area that they're using is the internet. they're allowing the response by the sbempinternet for the first. they also understand, believe me, not everyone has access to the internet so they offeree spons vi response via a paper questionnaire and offeree spo re

by telephone. they hope a large part of the american population responds by the internet. that will be producing much more timely, be much less expensive. the final change for the 2020 census deals with how you collect information from individuals who don't self-respond. for this census, the census bureau found using mobile technology in conjunction with a smartphone like this, but i think they're pretty agnostic to the smartphone they use, will work really, really well for the census. the census is ten questions. they fit on a smartphone very well. when you have mobile technology, you can really do a lot of things to more e forgffectively manage your workforce. you know, somebody picked up their work, you know if they're in the wrong area, you know if they're filling out the questionnaire -- doing the questionnaires too quick lly or too slowly. you can do a whole lot of things that really enhances the quality

of the census and makes it a lot easier to supervise and direct this workforce which gets us away from this pencil-and-paper operation. let me just say that if you look at some other data and you see the costs of the census, you'll see they're going up exponentially with each census, particularly with the '90 and 2010 census. the reason for that has been as the population has gotten more complex, using a paper and pencil method. your only solution is you have to throw a lot more people at it. hire a lot more people. that's what's been -- build a lot more infrastructure. that's what's been raising the cost of the census. initially, the census bureau was estimating that they might be able to do the census for under $12.5 billion compared to the cost of repeating the 2010

census in 2020 which was about $17.5 billion which would have been about $5 gibillion savings. since then, i think we'll talk about that more, the savings have eroded. i mean, also say one thing that it's very important about the 2020 census, and that is in the 2000 census, the census bureau started looking at reaching out to the american population through two vehicles. one was paid advertising. which was national and local. another one they called partnership, they hired a number of individuals to work with communities at a grassroots level and using trusted voices. they wanted to get two messages out. one message is why it was important to respond for your community where you live and that varied considerably depe

depending on communities. the other message, though, was that your data is confidential, the census bureau doesn't share it with anyone, not the i.c.e., not the fbi, not the irs, no one. so it seemed like that program worked in 2000 and it worked in the 2010 census because we saw dramatic increases in the undercounts of certain population groups. for example, in the 1990 census it didn't have this. undercount for the hispanic k population was 5%. that dropped under 2% for the 2010 census, while it's not perfect, is a dramatic gain in the accuracy and those programs are incredibly important to getting an accurate count because is the message is they get out. where are we at now?

2012 through 2017 in terms of the funding they requested and funding they received from the congress was $200 million below that funding. i think my colleagues are going to talk about that in much more detail. what that did, it forced the st census bureau to prioritize on developing the automated systems because they didn't think it was possible to do a paper and pencil census anymore in today's world. so they did prioritize on that. the effect was that without the full funding was that certain operations had to get pushed back in terms of the modernization, in fact, some will not be motnot be modernize. they had to defer activity on the advertising and the partnership program which is also a big concern. so where the census bureau is today is that they're poised to do an end-to-end task in 2018,

in fact, i think probably this week i think some materials would get mailed out or early next week, to start the process. but they're at a critical point. my colleagues will talk about funding issues. my colleagues will talk about the importance of starting that -- the advertising program. but they can't delay anymore and the funding for a good census cannot be delayed anymore. so -- >> thank you very much, director thompson. i think you had mentioned that the census is used for apportionment and even redistricting purposes and i think to be clear, that's everything from congress down to school boards, city councils -- >> right. >> -- et cetera, that it reaches all levels of government, correct? >> exactly. >> thank you. well, i think you set up terriann lowenthal. >> i think he has.

thank you. thank you, john, and john. thanks for having me, and i'd like to see what my tuition dollars paid for because none of this was here when i graduated from georgetown law many moons ago. i want to talk about two things, getting into a little more depth. john talked about why an accurate census is important. so the question is, does the census bureau actually get it right? so, it tries, and the census has generally gotten more accurate over time, as i think john mentioned, but it is not an equal opportunity enumeration. the census does not count all population groups equally well. people of color are missed at disproportionately high rates. low-income households in both urban and rural areas are missed at higher rates. while non-hispanic, whites, and higher income households were

overcounted in the 2010 census. also at risk of being missed, immigrants, female single parent households, female-headed single parent households. young mobile adults. i see a few in here. are all at risk of being -- not being counted. and most notably, children under the age of 5 have the highest undercount of any aged group. in 2010, in most of the nation's largest counties, one in ten children, young children, were not counted, and black and hispanic young children are missed at twice the rate of other young children. now, at the national level, census undercounts and overcounts basically cancel each other out and so the last census looked darn near perfect. but we don't use census numbers

at the national level, right? ? to distribute political representation, to allocate these hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding, to target new initiatives. and so the problem is that the people who are more likely to be missed don't tend to live in the same communities as the people who tend to be overcounted, double counted. so the mistakes in the census don't cancel each other out at the local level where it matters, instead, they compound each other and they magnify the inequalities that flow from this skewed picture. and so some communities get more than their fair share of political representation. and public and private resources. and others get far less than they should. and as john said, we have to live with those results for the next ten years. so that in a nutshell, right, is the challenge for the census bureau, reducing or eliminating that skewed picture and what we

call this differential undercount. so i just want to finish up with the next logical question, which is can the census bureau do that? what are the chances that they'll achieve that goal? i hate to say it, but we have some sobering news, i think. i'm increasingly worried that the census bureau will -- about its ability to pull off an accurate census, in other words, one that counts all communities equally well. think there's a confluence of unprecedented factors right now that could lead to the perfect storm in 2020 and thwart a good count. five really quickly, and john mentioned some of these already. there have been insufficient, delayed, uncertain, annual funding, you know, all through this census cycle and as a result, the census bureau has to cut back or cancel or delay

really critical testing and research. this is going to be the first high-tech census, as john, again, mentioned, and the first time there will be an option to respond online. now, nobody disputes the need to modernize the census, but technology also brings cyber security risks. real or perceived. so on the real side, we've got hacking. and phishing scam and disinformation campaigns in this, you know, time of social media. russia, i hope you're not listening. and then perceived, i mean, people are more reluctant to provide their personal information online because of what they hear about cyber security threats. and then even putting that aside, again, the high-tech census faces the digital divide, low-income households, rural households, you know, particularly are affected by lower access to the internet and

broadband. third, there is a palpable climate of fear in many communities now. and anti-immigrant rhetoric and stepped up federal law enforcement activities have driven millions of people, immigrants, into the shadows. even people who are in the country illegally but may live in a mix-status household, right? they may be undocumented. their children may be citizens. they would obviously be afraid of participating. or they just don't understand -- their status is not clear, there are a love on programs up in the air. they also don't trust this administration's intentions. that their census will be kept confidential and not harm them or their families no matter what the law says. i'm concerned about things like the opioid crisis and the drug epidemic in many communities which means people are less civically engaged and have some fear of law enforcement.

i think all of those things could affect census participation. like marco rubio, i don't feel bad about taking a sip of water. very quickly, the last two are proposals to add untested questions at the 11th hour to this census. and in particular, the justice department asked the census bureau to add a question on citizenship. that could derail, in my opinion, eight years' worth of research, testing, and planning, depress response rates and, of course, add billions of dollars to the cost of the census without any promise that the census will be accurate. by law, the commerce secretary must submit the actual census questions to congress by the end of this month. and that is likely to happen next week. you're going to see a lot about it in the press. and i think however the secretary decides, i think regrettab

regrettably, this census will then take place in the shadow of multiple lawsuits. work for you later. and actually a deep suspicion of the administration's motives for requesting this untimely and pretty much disruptive change to the census. and then finally, as john mentioned, there's a leadership vacuum. this gentleman resigned, and there are no candidates for census director in sight, and the deputy director position has been vacant as well for more than a year. so there's no question that we are facing an uphill battle, but you know what, sitting it out is not an option. there is a constitutional responsibility to take a census every ten years and we have to do what we can to make sure it goes well. >> thank you, terriann. i think you hit on something i thought was kind of important to maybe jump back to, in the allocation of funds over the next decade. so i think you were hitting on that nearly $7 trillion will be dispersed based on the counts from this census. >> over a ten-year period,

right. >> a ten-year period. and that areas with high proportions of children, young children, and those with large minority populations, will be especially affected by undercounts. >> that's exactly right. and i do think indi is going to talk a bit about that, i won't go into kdetail. you're right. the bottom line is communities where people are missed, they're invisible, right? we're just going to be making bad decisions all around. >> i think that transitions to indi fairly well. indi? >> thank you, john, and thanks to your colleagues at acs here. thanks also to my colleagues, sophie and casey, she was actually the primary author of the report that if you didn't pick up is out there on sort of the census and technology which i'd encourage you to read. it is much easier than any law

school reading you'll be doing. so i just want to focus on two broad points and try to say something positive. i'll do my best. so first, i wanted to focus on some of the issues around sort of technology and data. secondly, around federal funding. so on technology and data, i think what you heard from john thompson earlier was in part the technology is potentially a very promising, fruitful strategy for cost savings, for efficiency, right? and that makes sense. lots of other countries in the world have shifted to --le some cases, many years ago, to online and more technological sort of censuses. but there are, obviously, concerns, and sometimes it's a double double-edged sword. so, for example, our general goal is, of course, to get as many many people as possible to fill out the census online as possible. because that will allow us to free up resources for what we

called a nonresponse follow-up, where people knock on your doors, they talk to your landlord, your neighbors, and also be using some third-party data, administrative data, records from state agencies, state medicaid agencies and others to fill in some of the gaps. put two out of the three test sites for the dress rehearsal, as terriann calls it, the end-to-end test, of the census going on right now, had to be canceled. one was, for example, in west virginia, would have focused on rural areas. and we also had previous test sites for other aspects of the census that had to be canceled in tribal areas, in puerto rico, which was intended in that case to test multilingual operations. so we're going in with a lot less sort of confidence and certainty at this point, although hopefully we'll learn a lot from the current end-to-end test in providence, rhode island, that's ongoing about how well this internet and i.t. infrastructure is going to work. but the technology is not just about responding, right? so it's also about the devices

that enumerators will use to canvass, also about training. there's some testing, to get a sense of how thorough the census bea bureau is, they tested training for enumerators were. the enumerated training would be faster and cheaper. there was shortcomings there and challenges with connectivity issues in address canvassing as they say in west virginia, they go around to verify the addresses where there were dead spots and not cell phone access everywhere which this process sort of relies on. then there were issues with whether or not the enumerators who got the automated training were as efficient and follow path that were laid out for them. some of the efficiencies and cost savings are maybe in doubt relative to sort of what was

hoped for. the differential rates of internet access i will add a little to. we know about the digital divide. some of it counterintuitive in some cases. you could imagine there are situations where actually young people of color might be more likely to fill out the census now because they may have more access to mobile devices and internet and that could happen. it's also the case, though, that they may have phones that have -- are least likely to have protective software to protect from various problems that could happen. they may even be more likely to use free public wi-fi connections. they may have stronger drop-off rates where they don't finish or think they finished and submitted the census survey and haven't and we know some of this from testing is very real. so there's a lot of concerns here and it would have been really ideal to have tested this in a robust way and we'll see what we learn from what's going on right now in providence, rhode island, and we'll certainly all be monitoring it.

let me just talk a little about the federal funding. so the $700 billion, i just want to sort of give people a sense of sort of the consequences of this, i'll talk about the specific programs, but first of all, just keep in mind that census data are not only used for apportionment and drawing districts but also for enforcing voting rights, also for enforcing anti-discrimination laws. but let me just focus a little on some of the programs, so around $700 billion a year, right, so that's just federal programs. state and local programs and even some private sector programs may use census data, either directly or indirectly. the dicennial census as was mentioned affects the american constitution -- sorry, two acss, also affects the consumer price ind index, affects the poverty guidelines. in turn, this affects a range of programs. single biggest one being medicaid, over $310 billion a

year and a very direct impact, actually. the way medicaid works is a federal/state partnership and there's a match and the match rate is called fmap or federal medical assistance percentage. fmap not only affects medicaid but childcare and other funding streams as well, if fmap is based largely on a state's per capita income, and because the numbers a s come directly from different data sets, if you don't count as many people in h most of the states, a lot of the states qualify for the minimum fmap and aren't likely to be affected. if you don't count as many people actually are there, you could see a less generous subsidy from the federal government because they'll calculate a list jles less gene. medicaid is on average around 30% of all state spending is this is a big deal, the sort of federal subsidy or not. so other programs, though, programs that you may have heard of, s.n.a.p., section 8 housing

vouchers, head start, national school lunch, also in the justice realm, the justice assistance grant program which funds corrections source, behavioral health, defense programs. children's justice grant programs. crime victim assistance. also community mental health services block grant. a lot of these programs either directly or indirectly use census data in some way or another and depe penpend heavil the count being right for the program funding to go out in the right way. it may not mean that the overall funding is affected but it will mean the funding isn't targeted as well as it could have been. so i think about this, the impacts of the census are often indirect and often hidden, but they're very, very real. the one positive thing i just wanted to say is, i'm -- i think that sometimes people can hear all this and feel like this is not a winnable fight. i think that i don't share that view now. you can come back to me in six

months, but i think right now that there has been a wide sort of -- widespread dem stranonstr across the political spectrum, not always as much as i'd like, this should not be politicized, the census has been bipartisan, nonpartisan, however you want to think about it, for decades in many ways that this is important for so many aspects of our economy, for local school planning, for business development, housing construction, never mind the political value and also, of course, for federal funding. and we have seen that when people have spoken out and when this has been -- when issues have been prioritized, that this administration has sometimes backed down from decisions that concerned us or moved forward in ways that were helpful. recently, terriann and others have worked to secure more funding for the census, which -- that would not have happened if people had not been engaged and stayed engaged.

so just the four things i want to leave folks with is that it's very important that people stay informed, they educate policymakers at all levels and as we can talk about, if you have more on-the-ground community-based affiliations, organizations you work with, network, there's other ways people can get involved as well. >> thank you very much, indi. i'm glad to hear that there is a positive take. i think that makes a lot of sense that, you know, the census really does have a history of being bipartisan and a lot of people see value in that. i think that may help, you know, when things get a little bit off the trail there. so josh is going to speak a little bit about what we as respective lawyers can do to engage in this area. >> great. thank you. thank you for having me. really it's an honor to be with

three co-panelists who know about the census, far more than i do. i'll keep this brief and speak to a couple pieces have spent time on and then leave some room for questions, but to pick up on john's kind invitation there, let me use almost as a case study one set of legal concerns that our institute for constitutional advocacy and protection here at georgetown worked with a number of other groups to articulate with respect to leadership at the census bureau, and then i'll flag one other set of legal concerns and then happy to take on more in questions. but it's a good case study, and as you look at a broad array of issues, you've got a phenomenal number of them on the table, how bringing to bear legal challenges, or at least the articulation of legal concerns, can fit in. so others have mentioned that after my distinguished

co-panelist left t, the census bureau lacked a director and deputy director. to be clear, they have an acting director. everything i say is with a tremendous amount of respect for the civil servants who continue to work hard there. i was a civil servant in government, myself. so on the one hand, i want to emphasize how critical it is those folks are doing, i assume, the job they would be doing under any administration, any time, to carry this out in in i hope a bipartisan or nonpartisan way consistent with the census traditions. but at the same time, that absence of leadership raised for us and for others in the community watching this some real legal concerns. so we sent out five in a letter we sent almost two months ago to the day that we at icap and other organizations signed on to. let me talk about three of those in particular. first, we started with the fact that there are some jobs in the u.s. government that are

optional. statutes create them as part of the administrative agencies that make up much of our government but they're phrased as permissi permissive, maybe, can be. there are some jobs that say they shall be. the language says the census bureau shall be headed by a director. in some ways the simple ecst po is, there should be, congress passed a law, the president signed it, there shall be one of these in place. of course, there has to be leeway for a new president, frankly any president, to vet and replace individuals at jobs of this incredible importance, but we were seeing from the outside no real reports indicating that there were even potential nominees, potential prospects for this. so legal argument one was, there should be somebody in this job and we don't have any indication that at this point a year into this administration there's ban effo been an effort to fill the role.

the second argument was that this position for a position of its seniority is somewhat unusual and by statute it has certain criteria associated with it. in fact, the statute says "such appointment shall be made from individuals who have a demonstrated ability in managing large organizations and experience in the collection, analysis, and use of statistical data." you can see why congress put this in at one point, this seems quite useful for the role that director of this bureau would play. and let me add now to the circumstances, which is not only was there the absence of a even reported or rumored nominee as a director, but there were reports of an individual who might be installed as a deputy director, and frankly, we weren't as interested in the particulars of that individual, but we were interested in the idea that if this administration were to pursue a deputy director getting installed and not a director at any point, it would seem to be something of an end run around these statutory requirements

base there are -- these requirements don't a i ply to t the deputy director. these are the ones congress has specified for the director role. so to the extent that the reading the tealeafs of newspaper reporting suggested there was a director in the works and no director in the works, it raised the concern about basically trying to achieve an end runaround these statutorily required qualifications. then finally, federal law requires for this position, as for many other positions of this importance, that the position be appointed by the president, by and with the advice and consent of the senate, and it happens to add in this case without regard to political affiliation. and here it's another end run. the idea that appointing somebody to a deputy director role and the hope that that person would serve indefinitely, perpetually, as acting director, seemed to cut out the u.s. senate from its role in vetting the person and, frankly, vetting the person against a background of the same statutory criteria

that i set out before. so we and seven other groups signed on to a letter articulating these concerns and my hope, my perhaps, optimistic thought, is it contributed to a set of voices out there weighing in on different aspects of this situation and ultimately the rumored deputy director announced he was taking himself out of the running which in some ways mitigates some of the concerns about using a deputy director installation in the hope of a perpetual director but in an acting role that cuts out the senate, cuts out the statutory requirements for a director. on the other hand, doesn't address the very first problem which is having leadership of a certain sort at this critical moment in this critical process. so that's in some ways what -- when one sits in the role of legal advocacy organization, the type of slice of this complex set of issues that we and our colleagues and other groups were able to carve out and focus on.

let me put on the table one other thing we're watching, frankly, my co-panelists have teed it up already, which is the fact that this is the first virtual or digital census, at least in part. it's not us, alone, to be concerned about what that means for issues others have spoken to, whether that's vulnerabilities in how thehandl altering, ex fit cetera. it's folks on the hill. there have been two letters. the second one was signed out almost exactly a month ago, february 20th, asking the acting director of the census bureau for five specific pieces of information about the i.t. systems to be utilized as part of the end-to-end test and ultimately as part of the 2020 census, itself. and as it were, this letter is signed out by the chairman of the house committee on oversight and government reform who happens to be trey gowdy, as well as the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee on government operations. so this is not a democrat or

republican-only issue. but what's concerning is so far as i'm aware, they still haven't gotten answers. this is a letter in februaryfar as i'm aware, they still haven't gotten answers. this is a letter in february following up on a letter sent almost exactly four months earlier in november. that's three months earlier. three months earlier. you can see why i don't do the statistical work here. and one of the organizations with which we worked on the letter, a group called american oversight, has submitted a similar set of inquiries via y foya in the interest to understand what are these i.t. systems, to what extent should folks be interested in, concerned about vulnerabilities, how can those be mitigated? so that is another way to slice a complex interrelated set of concerns, but it begins with information flow, and that's why i think folks on the hill are rightly asking these questions. that's why those of us from outside are trying to get a handle on how these things will go. as soon as the end-to-end tests, but especially when the real thing rolls around, and

hopefully in useful ways put some pressure on the process the way the letter on leadership may have served a useful role. thank you. >> thank you very much. we have left a decent amount of time for questions. there are standing mikes in both of the stair aisles. one thing i would like to ask is that we prioritize any students who have questions. i know that there are plenty of other guests here. but before we go to the first question, i just wanted to first of all thank all of the panelists for being here today. i appreciate them all giving up part of their day and for taking some time to prepare for the panel today. so if you wouldn't mind, please all thank the panelists with me. i would also like to thank the american constitution society, the georgetown chapter of the american constitution society, the georgetown law students for democratic reform, and the georgetown law offices of

student life and communications for providing so much support for putting this panel together. thank you very much to all of them. finally, if you will be sticking around afterward, there will be a reception after -- after the questions conclude. one thing i will note, though, is if you have any questions for terriann, she, unfortunately, has to depart immediately following the event to catch her train back home. so if you have questions, please ask them here or find me afterward. i have her information to get into contact with her. all right. are there any questions? >> hi. i was wondering if the panelists could speak to some of the more controversial decisions that the census has been making, particularly i know there's -- i'm unsure of what the actual statutory decision has been, but there's been talk of counting prisoners in predominantly rural communities based on where the

prison is located and not based on the communities they come from. i know the immigration -- the addition of an immigration citizenship question has been controversial. and this might just be my progressive conspiratorial mindset right now, but the deputy director, i know is supposed to have the proposed one, the rumored one, was supposed to have some controversial beliefs. and i'm wondering if there's anything at all to my perception that there might be more political pressure from this administration to politicize this census to the benefit of republican constituencies -- constituents. >> let me talk a little bit about the issue on prisoners. so every census, i believe every census, prisoners have been counted in prisons. the idea of the census to count people where they usually live and sleep, and that's in the prison. now, there are some sound

arguments as to why that might not be the right place to count them. so in preparation for this census, the census bureau actually put their rules they're going to use on where to count people out for comment. they got over 80,000 comments. i think all but four were on the issue of where to count prisoners, and i think of those, all but about five were making the argument that prisoners should be counted not at the prisons, but where they were pre-incarceration because they had endearing ties to those locations and the belief was they were going to return there. that -- that took quite a bit of work at the census bureau to look at. one to look at all the comments, but two, to actually see was there any information that prisoners would return back to where they were?see was there a that prisoners would return back to where they were? there wasn't a whole lot of information on that. the census was doing some

research. at that point i left and the census bureau did announce they are going to count prisoners in the prisons and i don't think they were very clear why, cbut they did. i'll turn it over to terriann to give more insight here. >> thank you. john explained -- set the context there, and to drill down just a little bit more, there have, in in fact, been advocacy campaigns over the last several decades to try and change what we call the residesidents rule where incarcerated persons are located. there's been a big push to have incarcerated persons counted, their home address. in large part, the interest in that issue grew as the sort of prison complex, the institutional, you know,

complex, in the united states sort of expanded. we now have a lot of prisoners from urban areas who are incarcerated in rural communities. so as this whole state prison complex has grown, generally new prisons have been built in rural areas and so because prisoners were counted there, those communities get the benefit of those bodies, literally, for political representation, the allocation of resources, and the like. in fact, interestingly, there are now four states that have passed laws to change the census data after the census bureau gives it to them to take the prisoners out of the counts and put them back in their home communities using administrative data for within state districting, legislative redistricting purposes. as john said, there are actually, i think, almost 100,000 public comments on

whether the bureau should kachae this residence rule. they were continuing to do research and then john resigned and also november 6th, 2016, happened, and so we are now, you know, with the set of -- the final set of residence rules that does not change where prisoners are counted. okay. i know you had another bigger question. maybe others want to talk about that. about whether the census is being politicized. let me just say one thing, because i think this is important for law school. the consequences of the census are political by definition. the constitution says so. the census shall be used to distribute political representation, apportionment, again, through the 14th amendment, redistricting equal representation. the conduct of the census needs to be strictly not bipartisan,

nonpartisan. this is the federal, you know, the federal government's premier statistical agency and so it's important to fight to keep the process scientifically sound and nonpartisan. to the extent that there may be partisan influences to any number of decisions that are being made about the questions being asked or about the appointment of personnel, i would just say this, no one benefits from a failed census. right? we're all in this together. there are immigrants in every community. there are hard-to-count populations in every state, you know, rural areas and urban areas, and it really, i think, behooves any administration, and the one that's in place now, because this census will be on their watch, to make sure that the census is done in, you know, in it a sound way and a way in which -- done in a way that the public has confidence because the minute the public loses

confidence that the system has integrity and is objective, the counting system, not the implications, not the consequences, but the count, itself, when public confidence plummets, the census will fail. >> can i adjust one thing real quick? that is, when i was there,direc receive any kind of issues that would be considered political manipulation from either administration. i was there under the obama administration and also for a while under the trump administration. i will say this, the career people at the census bureau, almost everyone there right now is career, are committed to doing the best census they can and they'll do that for the money they get and the public cooperation, and i don't think that there would be any gains for trying to do anything internal to the census bureau to politicize it. that being said, there are certainly things that can happen that can make it really, really hard for them to do their job.

like t erkerri said, if public cooperation plummets, to the best of their ability they can't do anything. if they don't get the funding they need, they can only do so much, so i don't think -- it would be inside the census bureau, but there can certainly be things done that can affect the outcome of the census. >> taggi inging onto that, thos us who are interested and concerned about these issues want a greater understanding. where transparency and congressional oversight have a role to play. i share all of those sentiments about -- not having worked in particular at the census bureau, but the sentiments that civil servants will do their job and do it well and do it as much as the public cooperation, the funding, the resourcing, the cooperation they get from other parts of the government allows them to do. the question is, what are the other influences and is there reason to be concerned about them? there may or may not be. the best way to suss that out is to get a sense of what's the dynamic there. so one of the other signatory

organizations to the letter i mentioned, a group called protect democracy, had received a response to a foia request, changes of the potential installation of the rumored deputy director to be you mentioned. sort of revealed an interesting dynamic about the interplay between the white house and the bureau, itself, and the broader department of commerce about that. a little hard to read and sort of understand fully. whether it's through foia, whether it's through getting responses to congressional inquiries, whether it's through what i assume will be, hope will be actual hearings as the date of the actual census approaches, that's where getting an understanding can either help these civil servants do their job by ensuring that the public gets what's happening and trusts it, or whether it can lead to folks like you asking the type of questions you're asking because of a sense that there isn't full insight. >> let me just add a little bit to that, too, i think that maybe sort of asking a different

question, but hopefully it helps answer the question that you raised. i -- the census clearly matters a lot to this administration for, it appears, from what we do know for reasons other than trying to count everyone. and what we don't know, exactly, part of what josh was saying, from what we can see from the outside, the deputy director appointment raised concerns that a new head of legislative affairs raises concerns. he was a former aide in congress working on the citizenship question, the proposal from the justice department, to add a question about citizenship raisrais raises concerns. . the funding requests coming from the administration coming in typically under what even the census bureau, itself, has made clear it needs to do what it needs to, you know, with an increasingly complex society, get to a fair and accurate count. these are the sorts of things

that certainly raise concerns, what exactly, you know, the motivation is, it may be mixed, it may not be one thing. we don't really know, but i think that we should be certainly concerned that just getting a fair and accurate count isn't necessarily their highest priority or at least they're willing potentially to trade it. that's the politicals, that's the white house, that says nothing about the census bureau, the career staff. that's what they do. that's what they're good at. that's what they know to do, obligated to do to get to a fair and accurate count. they've done research -- the census starts at least the day after the last census. this isn't also something that just started. they've been planning for it, preparing for it. some of that preparation, unfortunately, won't necessarily come to the fruition we had hoped for, but, you know, i just want to share that i think we all have a lot of faith in the career staff doing what they can, but sometimes their hands are tied. >> director thompson, terriann,

wonder if you could briefly speak to exactly when planning for a census starts since that was just brought up. >> i'm going to actually let john -- except to say it doesn't just start the day after the last one, so actually in the middle of the last one, right? the census bureau is already embedding experimental questionnaires for 2020. for example, looking at new ways to collect the data on race and ethnicity. so it is ever green and ongoing. john, you canned add more specifics because you've done a through. >> that's a great example. so the planning has already started to some degree for the 2030 census. you know, the census bureau is asking themselves what are some things we want to test in 2020 to help us prepare for the 2030 census? again, like other things at the census bureau, that has gotten not the kind of funding that you might want to see at this part in the decade, so it's probably a little bit behind, but there is some work going on right now.

it will grow dramatically, though, in the next decade and in the next census cycle will start in the year ending in 2. that's when the funding will come in for the next census. wil come in nor tfor the next censu >> and if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself. >> i'm snead. i'm reporter for talking points. i wanted to talk about terry and the prospect of lawsuits going into this next census. i was wondering if you could talk more about what those lawsuits could look for, what the press decedent there is for lawsuits going into a census and elaborate more on what feel that could do for public participation. >> right. so i was trying to lift up all the law students, there is work for you after.

so this is probably professor geltzer definitely should answer this. i'll say one sentence census has been for many decades been the subject for a lot of litigation. very fascinating cases. gone up to the supreme court. back up. we've been there plenty times. please. >> i may give a somewhat disappointing answer to the extent there are suits still to be fired underway, something probably best left until they are filed for various reasons. but in some ways you are asking a broader question. you are asking a question what does it mean on one hand us to emphasize public confidence in something that we hope will deserve it and merit it because of the way it's carried out by the civil servants trying to get it right. and at the same time, to see what could well be increasing set of people arguing about it. in some ways impuning in a sense, at least aspect of it, by suing on it.

and, you know, i think that has a lot to do with messaging how litigation goes on. because there are things that i think would be worth suing on depending on how this shakes out. that doesn't fundamentally impugn a process or the civil servant people behind it. it's important. and as terry said it's proven important in the past and resolved at various levels of our judiciary. but the idea there are legitimate legal arguments and those should be decided and meanwhile people should not be, whether outside the government or inside, they should not use those as in excuse to talk about this process as if it is somehow fundamentally derailed. that strikes me as important and maybe the heart of the question you are asking. i happen to think that's true on a lot of fronts where obviously immense amounted of litigation going on with the current administration. there was immense amount of litigation with the previous

administration. but to speak about that responsibly and folks at the end of the day this is how we resolve things and what a court is i assume is obeyed by government and outside it. >> can i just add a closing thought on that? so most of the -- yeah, a lot of the lawsuits in the past, right, have been about the undercount, you have cities and states and advocacy groups, suing to try and make sure, before the census, that the methods that will be used will somehow reduce or eliminate or preclude, you know, guard against undercut, and certainly suits after a census when we know the census bureau measures its own accuracy that there have been undercuts especially disproportionate ones. interestingly, with all kind of laulgts surrounding the census, just more to the law students here, court has given a lot of

deference to the census bureau in terms of the way it takes census. what methods it uses. gives it a lot of flexibility in that regard. and so i think the interesting legal question, also, is is there a constitutional bottom line on accuracy? is there a point where the census is so flawed the undercount is so high, the results are so inaccurate, that a court might step in and say, obviously after a case has been filed, this does not meet a constitutional standard, or the standard that the constitution envisions for the census. that is a bottom line question that we don't know yet. and a very interesting one. is it even judiciary this question of is there a level. professor, would you agree with that?

>> certainly, uncharted but it would be interesting general matter the enumeration that the constitution calls for has some sort of judiciary minimal accuracy standards. or in particular if you think the standard met for certain vulnerable often under privileged groups, that they have suffered under count, could some of the case law regarding them be invoked. and i this i that would be interesting, but so far as i know pretty uncharted territory. >> can i say one thing really quickly. in the history of suits against the bureau, it has gone beyond, to your typical undercounting group. so for example, i remember i was in the state of massachusetts sued over the way the census bureau counted the military that went to the supreme court. the state of utah sued over the use of it may have been sampling, so that went to the supreme court.

now the suits arose over accuracy of account for an area or the count that haarea would receive. but not some of the traditional. >> you are right a lot of these suits went around the people are counting because that matters, right. if they are counting more overseas military population in some states than in others, and that effects the congressional apportionment, the state ta didn't get that last seat is going to be angry and going to go to court. and that has happened a number of times. but, again, we do find that the courts have generally given the census bureau a lot of deference in terms of these decisions about where to count people. and again how to count people. so in my mind the unanswered question is, is there a floor that the constitution would, you

know, prompt a court to step in and say, you know, this has gone below what's acceptable. >> does anyone feel that the change in residence rules for the overseas military population but not for the prison population raised any flags? >> i think that it was actually a good thing, more consistent with the census residence rules. so what happened was there are sort of two, a lot of different things, but two ways to think of the military. first you have those stationed overseas. and you really don't know where they are going to go for their next assignment. they could come back to the states. so what the census bureau has been doing is counting them at their home of recordment then there are the military that are deployed. and they are usually deployed for about six months. and they are going to return to the base that they were deployed from. and so the decision was to count them at the base they would be deployed from because there was a clear evidence that they be

returning to that base, which is sort of, if you dig into the court case, about the lawsuit about where to count the military, it was something is in there they have endeering ties and intended return in that case to the united states. >> right. and this is what i can tell you, because i tilely was in congress when the census bureau helped pass the bill that prompted the census bureau to decide to count members of the armed forces. and by the way federal civilian employees but a much smaller number who are stationed overseas during the census. in the state population totals that are used to apportion congress only, this is back for the 1990 census, and it took years to come to a political agreement on that, because it affected congressional apportionment and that is political by definition. but i do think -- so one thing i can tell you is this, there are going to be surprises on

december 31, 2020 when the census bureau reports the state population to the alts and the resulting congressional apportionment to the president. the inclusion of members of the armed forces stationed overseas in a different way this time, as john just described those deployed but stationed stateside, i don't have a the lo of money to wager but i'll wager a little it is going to affect at least one congressional seat between one state and the other. and some member of congress is going to wake up the next morning and say why didn't i pay any attention to this when the census bru owe was looking at these residence rules three years ago. >> hi, i'm rich cohen, and i happen to graduate from this lawson tear in 1972. makes me older than terry ann. and because of that i spent one

year as a student in this place. first, and second year at an old red brick building which was not great, at 5th and e, it is truly remarkable to see the campus and impressive to see the campus developed here. and one of a personal note. i am living proof, and there are plenty of others, that one can graduate from this law school and not practice law or even be a member of the bar and have a successful career in my case as a journalist covering congress for the most part. so my question is, to what extent -- this may be a false choice, and if so tell me -- to what extent are your concerns about the census that the maturations, that the prop lems that result will be sort of deliberately or even maliciously imposed on the census by the administration or by others?

or are your concerns also or even more so they'll be benign steps that are pursued that are taken that could mess up, that adversely affect the census? thank you. >> i don't know if i'd use those words. but i think knowingly might be the word i would use. we know -- >> what's the word? >> knowingly. i don't know about deliberately or maliciously. but we know if we take the question about asking about citizenship status, one, there is a case to be made it not necessary, it's already asked on the american community survey. but, two, there are lots of qualitative and other work that would suggest that it might contaminate the results of the overall census.

and so i think that the funding proposals, look, of course congress ultimately has, you know, when they decide to be a coequal branch has as much say on the administration on the funding questions. but the bureau has been making clear for a long time they've been very constrained as a matter of funding on certainty and funding, having to cut tests, it's not something that anyone can really say, oh, we had no idea, not funding the bureau would have these unfortunate repercussions. so i think it would be hard to say that some of these risks right now are ones that were not ones that people warned about or cautioned about. that said, none of this is a done deal.

there are times to get things right. and i think so far, in some ways think back things could have been much worse than they are at this point. others can add more. >> i'm more worried now than i have been. this is my fourth census in the policy arena. indy is absolutely right. there are challenges to every census. and different environment in which every census occurs. i think i'm losing more sleep in this decade. and as i said earlier, i think there are some unprecedented factors that taken together are, you know, could create this perfect storm in 2020. so i hate to keep using the maritime analogy and say sink the ship, because, obviously, no one wants that. and we are all going to keep paddling as hard as we can to

help the census bureau do what it needs to do and to do the job right. >> knowingly is probably a great word. because it's knowing, as your point goes your point not being a responsibility of the executive branch but congress as well as far as funding. it's known there should be more resourcing going to this. and it is known that in the current environment especially you would want to really have understood any cybersecurity vulnerabilities well ahead of time and dealt with them. you would want that any time you were rolling out a first digital census. but you especially want it over the past decade. not just the past election cycle. and so to see what from the outside appears to be insufficient, including on the hill with the funding question,

and to see what seems like not even a transparency with respect to the digital aspect of this and the security concerns, knowing that these are problems is the exactly right description. and the time window is quickly closing for dealing with them in a way that would be responsible. so i think that's a perfect word that indy chose. >> i'm chase reporter. my first question is when it comes to the 2018 dress rehearsal going on, what can be done in terms of changing processes and catching up on readiness in there are problems found in 2018 before reaching 2020? and secondly on the funding issue, i know the census right now is under continuous

resolution like the rest of the government but anomaly spending higher. so what practical impact does this have on the census being in the cr? >> so i guess there were a couple questions. one, the census bureau did get an anomaly for '18 that's letting them spend more money than they initially had, which is good. can they recover from -- i mean, they expect to find some issues in their systems in the 2018 test. and the question is, is how much of a problem are the issues that they find? i think that from my perspective when i was there, i this i thnk are going to find won't be very big in terms of the automation, and they'll be able to effectively deal with those. i think as terry ann said there are much bigger issues aside of

what they'll find in the automation that they'll have to deal with. and another thing about the continuing resolution is you are exactly right but even more important for fy '19. continuing resolution. and the census bureau is going to need to, one, they are going to need to be spending a lot of money. so they'll need anomaly that gives them the ability to spend faster and higher cap to spend than they would normally get under an anomaly or there are going to be some very serious problems. >> i think we'll have to cut things off. thank you very much. and i'd like to thank the panel one more time. i appreciate you taking the time to be here and answering the excellent questions we've had. thank you. >> thank you. thanks for having us. [ applause ] >> all right. if you'd like to speak with anybody on the panel outside, during the reception, there will be some wine, and finger foods

served upstairs. also, as was mentioned there are reports from ind yierks, would you remind me the name? >> inequality. >> reports from the american constitution society as well. thank you everyone. >> thank you.

looking ahead to prime time urban development ben carson testifies about his department's 2019 budget. that's tonight at 10 eastern on c-span 2. and over the weekend the march for our lives rally against gun violence takes place in washington d.c. you can watch live coverage saturday beginning at noon eastern on our companion network c-span. on saturday, at 8:00 p.m. eastern, on book tv on c-span 2, ben steel chronicles the efforts to rebuild western europe following worpd war 2. in his book the marshall plan, done of the cold war. at 11:00 p.m. 2018 critic circle awards. saturday on american history tv on c-span3 at 70:05 eastern it's

nancy pelosi smithian donation ceremony. at 10:00 p.m. on reel america the surprise march 1968 oval office speech by president lyndon b johnson announcing he would not seek re-election. that's followed by nixon showing the former vice president meeting voters in wisconsin. politico magazine joshua exams the creation of lyndon johnson great society legislation. at 9:00 p.m. eastern on afterwards, human rights campaign press secretary sara mcbride discusses her life as a transgender person and her lbgt

in her book. remembering the life of tv personality, political activist and founder of the national review who died in 2008. at 8:00 p.m. on the presidency, the relationship between george washington and native americans william buckley is examined by author callaway in his book the indian george washington, the first americans and the birth of the nation. during a senate finance committee hearing on u.s. trade policy today, colorado senator michael bennet asked u.s. trade representative robert lyell about the president's plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum and how they'll effect his state. you can watch the hearing. here's a look at that exchange. along the lines with what i was asking earlier about describing other countries as hostile, do you think the president has any awareness about the effect he has on the

domestic politics of our allies when he makes the tweets or decides on a day we ought to increase tariffs by 25% on steel and aluminum? i think he thinks he's scaring other people. but he's not really having that effect. i wonder whether you have a sense of the politics in those other places? >> listen, i'm a trump supporter. i love the president. i'm a trade expert. i'm not going to get engaged in ha political thing. that's not what i came here to do. >> it's not a political thing. would you agree with what he says can have an affect on agricultural commodity prices in the united states if people believe that other countries are going to retaliate against the proposed trade policies of the united states? that our farmers and ranchers are already being affected in the commodity prices they are seeing as a result of this rhetoric? would you agree there is a

danger of that? >> what i would agree with is that we have trade rights that we have to defend and that too often farmers get the short end of the stick. >> well, that's right. they do. >> we have to deal -- we cannot give up the fact that we have an $800 billion deficit. >> no one is asking you. >> i'm not asking you it do that. >> but behave to balance this. >> i'm asking you to understand there are -- that everybody is listening. and that our farmers and ranchers are bearing the brunt of it. what i'm not asking you to do is not fight for our fair rights to trade. that's not what i'm asking for. what i'm asking for is for us to do it in a way that doesn't inadvertently, i hope it's in advertent, drive commodities prices down at a moment when our farmers and ranchers can least withstand that? >> i'm sorry, what was the

question? >> i'll just finish by saying i don't think it helps when the president announces -- i'm sure he didn't consult with anybody here before he announced the tariffs. he said i'm going to raise tariffs by 25% then three weeks later you come with a list of australia, european union, and some others, sorry, we didn't really mean it. this isn't a business transaction that, you know, for real estate in new york city. this is the trade policy of the united states of america. and i wish you guys would consult with us so that, or just the republicans even, so that you can understand the effect that you are having in places like weld county, colorado where we need to have strong commodity prices and we are 80% of our wheat is exported overseas. my time is up. i apologize, mr. president, i'll just acknowledge that my farmers and ranchers know very well that the day that the president

announced thoos tariff increases, ttp was being signed in chile by the enumerated countries there and still waiting for this administration to have its, what it suggested would be its unilateral trade negotiations with every member of ttp, to see that their equities are being thought of by this administration. >> senator, your time is up. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979 h c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events in washington d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. the secretaries of the militaries armed forces testify before the house arm