One of the first things President Obama did when coming into office in January 2009 was to try to gain control over the Census Bureau.

President Trump had better learn from that.

There is a lot of tax money at stake, not to mention possible control over the House of Representatives. And the people running crucial parts of the Census Bureau right now are holdovers from the Obama administration.

What Obama tried and failed to do with the bureau created a big to-do in 2009, although most voters were probably unaware of the long-term implications.

Obama understood that controlling the Census Bureau directly — rather than having it report to Congress — was important because there was a nationwide decennial census coming up in 2010.

Trump has a decennial census approaching in 2020. These every-decade surveys cost billions to undertake, and the upcoming one is already filled with uncertainty and scandal. The Brookings Institution think tank said this survey could be “wildly inaccurate.”

In fact, the 2020 Census could be the most controversial of all because the government will be testing new ways to determine who lives in this country, where they are and what their needs are.

Before Obama probably even knew how to order Oval Office stationery, he decided that the Census Bureau was going to report to his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. It was determined, in essence, that Emanuel was better at overseeing the 2010 census than the people at the bureau who reported to Congress.

Or, at least, the results of that census would turn out better for the Democrats with Emanuel in charge.

“This is nothing more than a land grab,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said at the time. Other Republicans got so bent out of shape by what Obama was trying to do that then-Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) withdrew his nomination to be Secretary of Commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau.

Remember, I caught census cheating on the unemployment survey — a problem that probably continues today. So Trump might want to get on the ball.