While a 2007 budget conference committee won't determine a final budget number until later this year, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) plans to hold a special hearing on July 27 to discuss the census budget, an aide to Wolf said Monday. Wolf chairs a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee that oversees the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Census Bureau.

One of the topics to be considered next week is whether the funding bills proposed by both chambers will threaten the rollout of 500,000 wireless handheld devices for census takers who will go door-to-door for the 2010 national census, the aide said.

Wolf last week told reporters that the House and Senate funding bills "would be devastating" to the Census Bureau, although he did not specify that the cuts would automatically kill the handheld program. The White House proposed $878 million for bureau operations in 2007; the House of Representatives last month approved $824 million, and the Senate last week approved $828 million, according to congressional records online.

Census Bureau officials would not comment about the reductions or the handheld program's future, saying only that they are monitoring the ongoing budget process. The handheld program is intact -- for now, a bureau spokesman said.

He said that the bureau sent an impact statement to House members in June about the cuts, but since it was not released publicly, he would not share its contents. One published report indicated that the cuts would force the bureau to drop the handheld program, which would add $1 billion in costs during the next four years.