NYT: "Welcome to the one step forward, two steps backward 2010 Census"

From Monday's NY Times editorial board...

Welcome once again to the one-step forward, two-steps backward world of the 2010 census. With little more than six months before the start of the next count, the Census Bureau still doesn’t have a director. And on Tuesday, the bureau’s budget faces a crucial vote by House appropriators who must resist the temptation to shortchange the agency yet again.

The Obama administration inherited a Census Bureau that is ill prepared, after years of meddling and mismanagement, to conduct the upcoming count. In April, President Obama finally nominated Robert M. Groves, a top sociologist and survey expert, to lead the bureau, and in mid-May the Senate held Mr. Groves’s confirmation hearing. At long last — and not a moment too soon — the census seemed to be getting back on track.

More than three weeks later, Mr. Groves has yet to be confirmed. He is the latest target of an unexplained hold by one or more anonymous Republican senators. (Under recent Senate rule changes, it’s hard but not impossible to keep such a hold going for several weeks.) If it endures, it would take 60 votes to confirm Mr. Groves.

It is hard to imagine the public interest that is being served by the hold. It is easy, unfortunately, to imagine the political interest. A leaderless Census Bureau is unlikely to pull off an accurate count. Inaccurate tallies tend to favor Republicans, because a bad census misses hard-to-count groups that tilt Democratic, like minorities and immigrants, thus over-representing easy-to-count suburbanites who tilt Republican.

And then there is the bureau’s budget. Mr. Obama wisely requested $7.4 billion for next year — a 135 percent increase, reflecting the fact that the actual count will take place in 2010. The subcommittee in charge of the census approved the amount. But what the full committee will do is an open question, especially since the census budget is in a bill that also provides financing for dozens of other activities — including projects at the Department of Justice, NASA and the National Science Foundation — none of which have fared as well.

The Census Bureau needs a director and all the money that has been requested. There’s no more time to waste.