Will America Remain Without Statistics? Pre-election Debate on US Budget

America is at risk of remaining without key social and economic statistics. With such a warning, Robert Groves, Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, opened his speech on Friday, “Modern societies need current, detailed social and economic statistics; the U.S. is losing them,” a point he emphasized in his departmental blog.

The director’s concern was prompted by the U.S. Federal Budget Project, which was recently approved by Congress before the House of Representatives, now under control of the Republican Party. It provides complete abolition of the two key programs of the Census Bureau, including “Economic Census” of American companies and firms, as well as a unique socio-demographic survey designed to identify the impact of economic trends across all American states.

In reviewing overall content of the budget bill, Groves worries that the worst is yet to come. It suffices to say that the document includes a 5 percent decrease in pay for all federal employees in the country. The bill proposes that employees pay more toward their pension without an increase of benefits.

In addition, the Republicans want to cut the budget for a lot of social programs, primarily aimed at supporting the poor. Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi stated that this initiative literally “takes food out of the mouths of children.”

However, the opposition seeks to avoid the sequestration of the military budget by any means and even proposes to increase it over the Pentagon’s protest. The threat of sequestration rose from the fact that the U.S. leading political parties cannot agree among themselves on how to reduce the budget deficit.

The budget bill adopted by the House of Representatives has no chance to go through the U.S. Senate, where the ruling Democratic Party retains a majority. In addition, the White House clearly threatened the authors of the bill with a presidential veto.

However, the opposition shows a very important practical sense. First, it confirms that the Republicans are committed to a decisive and uncompromising battle against the ruling party in the upcoming November election. In addition, it reveals their priorities and strategies by which they expect to succeed in this fight.

“Republicans are gambling that they will get more credit from voters for being fiscally conservative than they will get grief for proposing specific budget cuts,” says The Wall Street Journal.

There are clearly economic class undertones in the cross-party strife around the U.S. budget. The Chairman of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives and one of the key authors of the bill, Paul Ryan, stated during the discussion of the document that existing welfare programs do not work for the poor because of poverty growth. He called “to get back to the ‘American Idea’, an opportunity society with a safety net that’s there for people so that they don’t slip through the cracks, to get people back on their feet on their own and to help people who can’t help themselves.”

Congressman Chris Van Hollen, who is a veteran among Democrats in this committee, reminded that “unfortunately, the Republican approach to the budget takes this lopsided approach. They have signed a pledge that says they’re not going to ask for one penny of additional contribution from people making more than $1 million a year. And the math is pretty simple after that. Your budget has to whack everyone else.”