What About the Census? Does the choice of Judd Gregg make sense?

[groovedaddy]

From NY Times:

There’s been a lot of speculation about what President Obama was thinking when he decided to nominate Senator Judd Gregg, a prominent Republican, as secretary of commerce. Is he looking for the dissenting voice that will sharpen his views? Or, as The Wall Street Journal put it, is he trying to psych out Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, by availing himself of Mr. Gregg’s advice on how to pick off Republican votes in the Senate?

Time will tell. An easier question to answer is what Mr. Obama wasn’t thinking about when he chose Mr. Gregg. It seems safe to say that the 2010 census was not weighing on the president’s mind, though it should have been.

The Census Bureau is a major agency within the Commerce Department, and the decennial census — the next one is in 2010 — is a mammoth undertaking. After years of mismanagement and underfinancing by the Bush administration, the bureau is so ill prepared to conduct next year’s count that Congressional investigators have warned that it is at high risk of failure unless corrective action is taken immediately.

Mr. Gregg was never a friend of the census. As chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the Commerce Department’s budget, he frequently tried to cut the bureau’s financing. In 1999, he opposed emergency funds for the 2000 census requested by President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled House.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/opinion/05thu3.html?th&emc=th

[Still Sensible]

1. One thing the republicans have done for decades

is do things like underfund the census apparatus and frequently attack the census bureau's numbers. Regardless of the grounds they cite for the underfunding or the attacks, it has clearly been a ruse to try and make sure that minorities and the poor--which usually vote democratic--are under-counted. They would argue that that is not the case, but that's bullshit.

Since the census figures are used for so many things, including redistricting every decade, allotting resources, etc., it is no surprise the GOP takes positions like that. Gregg's past actions are consistent with that philosophy, but no less wrong. If he gets confirmed in this position it will be imperative to watch him like a hawk vis-a-vis the census... and crucial that a strong democrat is at the helm of the census bureau.

It really is no different than the positions the GOP takes to suppress voter rolls.

[blue97keet]

2. Dump Judd Gregg (R-NH)

for Commerce secretary- "who has built up a record of voting for every single corporate-written trade deal of the last generation" - David Sirota