[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 155 (Friday, November 7, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11980-S11982]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. BROWNBACK (for himself, Mr. Moynihan, Mr. Thompson, and 
        Mr. Kerrey):
  S. 1404. A bill to establish a Federal Commission on Statistical 
Policy to study the reorganization of the Federal statistical system, 
to provide uniform safeguards for the confidentiality of information 
acquired for exclusively statistical purposes, and to improve the 
efficiency of Federal statistical programs and the quality of Federal 
statistics by permitting limited sharing of records among designated 
agencies for statistical purposes under strong safeguards; to the 
Committee on Governmental Affairs.


               the federal statistical system act of 1997

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I join my distinguished colleagues, 
Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee, 
and Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, in introducing legislation to 
establish a commission to study the Federal statistical system. 
Congressman Stephen Horn of California and Congresswoman Carolyn 
Maloney of New York plan on introducing identical legislation in the 
House of Representatives. This legislation is similar to bills I 
introduced in September 1996, and again at the beginning of this 
Congress.
  The commission to study the Federal statistical system would consist 
of 15 Presidential and congressional appointees with expertise in 
fields such as actuarial science, finance, and economics. Its members 
would conduct a thorough review of the U.S. statistical system, and 
issue a report including recommendations on whether statistical 
agencies should be consolidated.
  Of course, we have an example of a consolidated statistical agency 
just across the northern border. Statistics Canada, the most 
centralized statistical agency among OECD countries, was established in 
November, 1918 as a reaction to a familiar problem. At that time, the 
Canadian Minister of Industry was trying to obtain an estimate of the 
manpower resources that Canada could commit to the war effort. And he 
got widely different estimates from statistical agencies scattered 
throughout the government. Consolidation seemed the way to solve this 
problem, and so it happened--as it can in a parliamentary government--
rather quickly, just as World War I ended.
  Last spring, a member of my staff met in Ottawa with the Assistant 
Chief Statistician of Statistics Canada. He reported that Statistics 
Canada is doing quite well. Decisions about the allocation of resources 
among statistical functions are made at the highest levels of 
government because the Chief Statistician of Statistics Canada holds a 
position equivalent to Deputy Cabinet Minister. He communicates 
directly with Deputy Ministers in other Cabinet Departments. In 
contrast, in the United States, statistical agencies are buried several 
levels below the Cabinet Secretaries, so it is difficult for the heads 
of these statistical agencies to bring issues to the attention of high-
ranking administration officials and Congress.
  Statistics are part of our constitutional arrangement, which provides 
for a decennial census that, among other purposes, is the basis for 
apportionment of membership in the House of Representatives. I quote 
from article I, section I:

       . . . enumeration shall be made within three Years after 
     the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and 
     within ever subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as 
     they shall by Law direct.

  But, while the Constitution directed that there be a census, there 
was, initially, no Census Bureau. The earliest censuses were conducted 
by U.S. Marshals. Later on, statistical bureaus in State governments 
collected the data, with a Superintendent of the Census overseeing from 
Washington. It was not until 1902 that a permanent Bureau of the Census 
was created by the Congress, housed initially in the Interior 
Department. In 1903 the Bureau was transferred to the newly established 
Department of Commerce and Labor.
  The Statistics of Income Division of the Internal Revenue Service, 
which was originally an independent body, began collecting data in 
1866. It too was transferred to the new Department of Commerce and 
Labor in 1903, but then was put in the Treasury Department in 1913 
following ratification of the 16th amendment, which gave Congress the 
power to impose an income tax.
  A Bureau of Labor, created in 1884, was also initially in the 
Interior Department. The first Commissioner, appointed in 1885, was 
Col. Carroll D. Wright, a distinguished Civil War veteran of the New 
Hampshire Volunteers. A self-trained social scientist, Colonel Wright 
pioneered techniques for collecting and analyzing survey data on 
income, prices, and wages. He had previously served as chief of the 
Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics, a post he held for 15 years, and in 
that capacity had supervised the 1880 Federal Census in Massachusetts.
  In 1888, the Bureau of Labor became an independent agency. In 1903, 
it was once again made a bureau, joining other statistical agencies in 
the Department of Commerce and Labor. When a new Department of Labor 
was formed in 1913, giving labor an independent voice--as labor was 
removed from the Department of Commerce and Labor--what we now know as 
the Bureau of Labor Statistics was transferred the newly created 
Department of Labor.
  And so it went. Statistical agencies sprung up as needed. And they 
moved back and forth as new executive departments were formed. Today, 
some 89

[[Page S11981]]

different organizations in the Federal Government comprise parts of our 
national statistical infrastructure. Eleven of these organizations have 
as their primary function the generation of data. These 11 
organizations are:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                 Date
               Agency                      Department        established
------------------------------------------------------------------------
National Agricultural Statistical    Agriculture...........       1863
 Service.
Statistics of Income Division, IRS.  Treasury..............       1866
Economic Research Service..........  Agriculture...........       1867
National Center for Education        Education.............       1867
 Statistics.
Bureau of Labor Statistics.........  Labor.................       1884
Bureau of the Census...............  Commerce..............       1902
Bureau of Economic Analysis........  Commerce..............       1912
National Center for Health           Health and Human             1912
 Statistics.                          Services.
Bureau of Justice Statistics.......  Justice...............       1968
Energy Information Administration..  Energy................       1974
Bureau of Transportation Statistics  Transportation........       1991
------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          need for legislation

  President Kennedy once said:

       Democracy is a difficult kind of government. It requires 
     the highest qualities of self-discipline, restraint, a 
     willingness to make commitments and sacrifices for the 
     general interest, and also it requires knowledge.

That knowledge often comes from accurate statistics. You cannot begin 
to solve a problem until you can measure it.
  This legislation would require the Commission to conduct a 
comprehensive examination of the current statistical system and focus 
particularly on whether three agencies that produce data as their 
primary product--the Bureau of Economic Analysis [BEA] and the Bureau 
of the Census in the Commerce Department, and the Bureau of Labor 
Statistics [BLS] in the Labor Department--should be consolidated into a 
Federal statistical service.
  In September 1996, prior to when I first introduced a bill 
establishing a commission to study the U.S. statistical system, I 
received a letter from nine former chairmen of the Council of Economic 
Advisers [CEA] endorsing this legislation. Excluding two recent chairs, 
who at that time were still serving in the Clinton administration, the 
signatories include virtually every living former chair of the CEA. 
While acknowledging that the United States possesses a first-class 
statistical system, these former chairmen remind us that problems 
periodically arise under the current system of widely scattered 
responsibilities. They conclude as follows:

       Without at all prejudging the appropriate measures to deal 
     with these difficult problems, we believe that a 
     thoroughgoing review by a highly qualified and bipartisan 
     Commission as provided in your bill has great promise of 
     showing the way to major improvements.

  The letter is signed by Michael J. Boskin, Martin Feldstein, Alan 
Greenspan, Paul W. McCracken, Raymond J. Saulnier, Charles L. Schultze, 
Beryl W. Sprinkel, Herbert Stein, and Murray Weidenbaum. I ask 
unanimous consent that the full text of this letter be printed in the 
Record following my statement.
  It happens that this Senator's association with the statistical 
system in the executive branch began over three decades ago. I was 
Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy and Planning in the 
administration of President John F. Kennedy. This was a new position in 
which I was nominally responsible for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I 
say nominally out of respect for the independence of that venerable 
institution, which as I noted earlier long predated the Department of 
Labor itself. The then-Commissioner of the BLS, Ewan Clague, could not 
have been more friendly and supportive. And so were the statisticians, 
who undertook to teach me to the extent I was teachable. They even 
shared professional confidences. And so it was that I came to have some 
familiarity with the field.

  For example, we had just received a report on price indexes from a 
committee led by a Nobel laureate, George Stigler. The committee 
stressed the importance of accurate and timely statistics noting that:

       The periodic revision of price indexes, and the almost 
     continuous alterations in details of their calculation, are 
     essential if the indexes are to serve their primary function 
     of measuring the average movements of prices.

  While the final report of the Advisory Commission to Study the 
Consumer Index, the Boskin Commission, focused primarily on the extent 
to which changes in the CPI overstate inflation, the commission also 
addressed issues related to the effectiveness of Federal statistical 
programs and recommended that:

       Congress should enact the legislation necessary for the 
     Department of Commerce and Labor to share information in the 
     interest of improving accuracy and timeliness of economic 
     statistics and to reduce the resources consumed in their 
     development and production.

  And last week, we were again reminded of the importance of accurate 
and timely government statistics. The front page of the Wall Street 
Journal carried this headline on Tuesday October 29: ``An Extra $46 
Billion in Treasury's Coffers Puzzles Washington''.
  No one knows for sure the answer to this puzzle. Surely though, a 
changing economy which produces more and more services--which are 
harder to measure the value of than the goods it replaces--needs a top 
to bottom review of its statistical infrastructure. For if the public 
loses confidence in our statistics, they are likely to lose confidence 
in our policies as well.
  There is, of course, a long history of attempts to reform our 
Nation's statistical infrastructure. From the period 1903 to 1990, 16 
different committees, commissions, and study groups have convened to 
assess our statistical infrastructure, but in most cases little or no 
action has been taken on their recommendations. The result of this 
inaction has been an ever expanding statistical system. It continues to 
grow in order to meet new data needs, but with little or no regard for 
the overall objectives of the system. Janet L. Norwood, former 
Commissioner of the BLS, writes in her book ``Organizing to Count'':

       The U.S. system has neither the advantages that come from 
     centralization nor the efficiency that comes from strong 
     coordination in decentralization. As presently organized, 
     therefore, the country's statistical system will be hard 
     pressed to meet the demands of a technologically advanced, 
     increasingly internationalized world in which the demand for 
     objective data of high quality is steadily rising.

  In this era of Government downsizing and budget cutting, it is 
unlikely that Congress will appropriate more funds for statistical 
agencies. It is clear that to preserve and improve the statistical 
system we must consider reforming it, yet we must not attempt to reform 
the system until we have heard from experts in the field.


                         summary of legislation

  The legislation establishes a commission to study the Federal 
statistical system. The commission would consist of 15 members. Two--
the Chief Statistician of the Office of Management and Budget and a 
high-level government official--serve ex officio on the commission. The 
high-level official, selected by the President from among Cabinet 
officers, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal 
Reserve, the Comptroller General, or the Chairman of the Council of 
Economic Advisers--will serve as chairman.
  The other 13 members of the commission will be appointed as follows: 
Five by the President, no more than three of whom are to be from the 
same political party, four by the President pro tempore of the Senate, 
no more than two of whom are to be from the same political party, and 
four by the Speaker of the House, no more than two of whom are to be 
from the same political party.
  In an initial 18-month period, the commission would determine whether 
and how to consolidate the Federal statistical system, and would also 
make recommendations with respect to ways to achieve greater efficiency 
in carrying out Federal statistical programs. If the commission 
recommends consolidation of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau 
of the Census, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis into a newly 
established independent Federal agency, designated as the Federal 
Statistical Service, the commission's report would contain draft 
legislation incorporating such recommendations. The legislation would 
then be considered by the Congress under fast-track procedures.
  If legislation establishing a Federal statistical service is enacted 
by the Congress, the commission then would become a permanent body that 
would:
  Make recommendations for nominations for the appointment of an 
Administrator and Deputy Administrator of the Federal Statistical 
Service; serve

[[Page S11982]]

as an advisory body to the Federal Statistical Service on 
confidentiality issues; and conduct comprehensive studies, and submit 
reports to Congress on all matters relating to the Federal statistical 
infrastructure, including:
  An examination of the methodology involved in producing official 
data; a review of information technology and recommendations of 
appropriate methods for disseminating statistical data; and a 
comparison of our statistical system with the systems of other nations.
  This legislation is only a first step, but an essential one. The 
commission will provide Congress with the blueprint for reform. It will 
be up to us to finally take action after nearly a century of 
inattention to this very important issue.
                                 ______