President's Budget Cuts Funding for Key Census Survey

Contact: Liz Chimienti, 202-293-5380 x110

Washington, DC: The Center for Economic and Policy Research released the following statement today in response to the President’s FY 2008 budget which cuts funding for the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP):

“For the second year in a row, the President’s budget has cut funding for the Survey of Income and Program Participation. We understand this budget was based on estimates of funding for FY 2007, and hope that full funding will be restored to reflect the wishes of Congress as expressed in their FY 2007 joint funding resolution.

Data from the SIPP are essential to good policymaking. If we lose the SIPP, we will lose the only source of high-quality data on the effectiveness of many vital government programs. We will lose the ability to track of how well the Americans with Disabilities Act is serving Americans. We will lose the ability to track how people transition into and out of poverty and health insurance coverage. We will lose data on the hardships families face when they do not have sufficient income, and on how families balance work and care for children and sick relatives.

It would be irresponsible to discontinue the SIPP without carefully designing and testing a successor survey. Without field-testing and evaluating the proposed new method of data collection, we will not know how effective it is and could squander much of the past 23 years of investment in this critical measure of Americans' well-being."