by KYW's Steve Tawa
The US Secretary of Commerce, on a visit to Philadelphia, celebrated the roots of the US census on Tuesday while promoting the 2010 effort to get a complete count of every person in the United States.
At the National Constitution Center on Independence Mall, commerce secretary Gary Locke (at lectern above) said that the US Constitution famously instructs the people to seek a more perfect union. But he says we can only have a government "for the people and by the people" if we know how many people there are, and where they live.
And, he adds, "It was as controversial in 1790 as it is today."
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, he says, believed that the first census failed to find about 100,000 people in the new United States:
"What's more, George Washington believed that the undercount was due to people's unfounded fears of providing information to the federal government."
Then, as now, Locke says, people's fears were unjustified:
"All of the information in the census is absolutely private."
The form asks ten questions, and not a single one about citizenship, immigration status, or other personal information.
Organizers say the 2010 census will, in large part, dictate how federal dollars flow to states and cities over the next decade.
(Photo by KYW's Steve Tawa)
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