Cite as: 505 U. S. 788 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
ciently direct and immediate" and has a "direct effect on . . .
day-to-day business." Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 152 (1967). An agency action is not final if it is only "the ruling of a subordinate official," or "tentative." Id., at 151. The core question is whether the agency has completed its decisionmaking process, and whether the result of that process is one that will directly affect the parties. In this case, the action that creates an entitlement to a particular number of Representatives and has a direct effect on the reapportionment is the President's statement to Congress, not the Secretary's report to the President.
Unlike other statutes that expressly require the President to transmit an agency's report directly to Congress, § 2a does not. Compare, e. g., 20 U. S. C. § 1017(d) ("The President shall transmit each such report [of the National Advisory Council on Continuing Education] to the Congress with his comments and recommendations"); 30 U. S. C. § 1315(c) (similar language); 42 U. S. C. § 3015(f) (similar language); 42 U. S. C. § 6633(b)(2) (similar language). After receiving the Secretary's report, the President is to "transmit to the Congress a statement showing the whole number of persons in each State . . . as ascertained under the . . . decennial census of the population." 2 U. S. C. § 2a(a). Section 2a does not expressly require the President to use the data in the Secretary's report, but, rather, the data from the "decennial census." There is no statute forbidding amendment of the "decennial census" itself after the Secretary submits the report to the President. For potential litigants, therefore, the "decennial census" still presents a moving target, even after the Secretary reports to the President. In this case, the Department of Commerce, in its press release issued the day the Secretary submitted the report to the President, was explicit that the data presented to the President was still subject to correction. See United States Department of Commerce News, Bureau of Census, 1990 Census Population for the United States is 249,632,692: Reapportionment Will
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