Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

21. Department of Commerce · Major · Needs Congress

Merge BEA, Census, and BLS into one statistical agency

Not started

664 21. Department of Commerce

“The Bureau of Economic Analysis and Census Bureau, as well as the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, should be consolidated into a more manageable, focused, and efficient statistical agency”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The three bureaus are still separate and still in two departments. No consolidation was proposed in either the FY2026 or the FY2027 President's Budget, no reorganization document appears in the Federal Register, and P.L. 119-74 (2026-01-23) funds "Economic and Statistical Analysis" (the home of the Bureau of Economic Analysis) and the "Bureau of the Census" under separate headings in its Department of Commerce title.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Negative searches (exact strings in docs/research/ch-21.md): a Federal Register full-text search since 2025-01-20 for “statistical agency” together with “consolidat” returns nothing; “Department Organization Order” returns nothing; neither “Bureau of Labor Statistics” nor “statistical agency” appears in the FY2026 discretionary request or the FY2027 Budget volume; the whitehouse.gov presidential-actions Corpus has no document mentioning the census or the statistical system.
  • The one bill in the 119th-Congress Corpus on the subject moves the other way and never left committee: H.R. 4907, the Statistical Agency Integrity and Independence Act of 2025 (introduced, referred 2025-08-05), which would entrench the independence of the existing agencies rather than merge them. Recorded as a lead; govinfo.gov/app/details/BILLS-119hr4907 answered HTTP 500 when fetched.
  • Primary source loaded this session: P.L. 119-74, Department of Commerce Appropriations Act, 2026 — separate “Economic and Statistical Analysis” ($118,000,000) and “Bureau of the Census” ($318,500,000 current surveys; $1,171,849,000 periodic censuses) headings — https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-119publ74./html/PLAW-119publ74..htm The Bureau of Labor Statistics is funded in a different appropriations bill entirely, which is the structural fact the Mandate wants changed.
Action
transfer
Object
Bureau of Economic Analysis, Census Bureau, and Bureau of Labor Statistics
ID
1812