The Obama Administration Politicizes the U.S. Census

Today I received a letter from the United States Census Bureau notifying me that in about a week I will receive a 2010 Census form in the mail. Apparently, the Obama Administration has seized the opportunity to politicize the U.S. Census.

The letter declares a resident’s response “important,” but gives only one reason: that the results of “the 2010 Census will be used to help each community get its fair share of government funds for highways, schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors need.” Thus, instead of taking the opportunity to educate Americans by explaining that the purpose of the Census is that it is required to be conducted every ten years by the United States Constitution in order to apportion representatives in Congress among the states, the letter appeals to personal self-interest instead of the interest of the community and the state.

The Obama Administration’s Census Bureau’s letter represents welfare statist propaganda, insofar as it presents government as an entity that gives away its money. Note the letter refers to that money opaquely as “funds,” not as “public money” or as “taxpayer dollars.” The Census Bureau declares in the letter that the “programs” are something the resident and his neighbors “need,” even though welfare programs are not necessarily needed by each resident, if they are truly needed by anyone at all.

The Census Bureau’s letter reveals an anti-federalist bias not only because it emphasizes personal self-interest over interest for one’s state, but also because it refers generally to “government” instead of the “federal government” or “federal and state governments” as if the federal government is the government, i.e. it is responsible for everything, and states are merely its provinces, not the sovereign independent entities that created the federal government though the Constitution. Thus, the Obama Administration is subverting the intent of the Framers who insisted that states retain their sovereignty, instead of allowing their citizens’ money to be confiscated by the federal government for “programs” of dubious constitutionality.

There is one positive aspect to the Obama Administration’s propaganda letter: it refers to the distribution of public money by the federal government proportionate to the population as a “fair share,” which is an admission that those congressional districts or states that receive earmarks or other forms of pork in addition to the base level of funding are receiving an unfair share of tax dollars, despite the Administration’s policies of accepting such unfair appropriations.

Nevertheless, the Obama Administration is wrong to use a letter from the Census Bureau to American residents as an opportunity to indoctrinate the people, contrary to the intent of the Framers who established the Census and the Congress that authorizes the money to conduct it. Americans must have confidence that the Census in being conducted in a non-political manner in order to have confidence in its results. Conservatives must persist in educating Americans about the Constitution by exposing and refuting anti-constitutional liberal statements whenever they see them.