Sen. Rick Scott on Tuesday followed up his tirade this week about the Biden administration massaging recent employment numbers.
Now, the Florida Republican wants the administration to explain how it was off by a factor of 100 when reporting the job growth for the second quarter.
Ahead of the Thursday meeting with him, Scott sent a letter to Commissioner William Beach, head of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The senator demanded answers on how the administration claimed 1.1 million jobs were added during Q2 when the Philadelphia Federal Reserve’s analysis said the real number was more like 10,500.
The letter followed a tweet by Scott on Friday, in which he said, “WRONG BY A MILLION JOBS. THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS. @JoeBiden’s admin has been lying to the American people about our economy to prop up his failed agenda & I won’t stand for it. I’m requesting an immediate meeting with the head of @BLS_gov. WE NEED ANSWERS NOW!”
In his actual letter to Beach, Scott stated, “For the better part of his presidency, while the American economy has struggled and record inflation has brought historic pain to families and small businesses across the country, President Joe Biden has consistently bragged about job growth.”
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“While ignoring the fact that the vast and overwhelming majority of jobs he now takes credit for are not new, but simply have returned following mandatory shutdowns in Democrat-controlled states and cities, President Biden has used data and reports from your agency, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS), to support advancing his radical, agenda and big government policies.”
Yet now, Scott continued, “thanks to the good work of analysts at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, we know that the BLS inaccurately reported the creation of more than one million jobs and that much of what President Biden has claimed credit for as the economic achievements for his administration is a lie.”
Scott noted that he realizes the BLS relies on projections, based on the collection of real data, to report nationwide figures and that tweaking the numbers is understandable.
“But what the Philadelphia Fed uncovered is not an insignificant projection error,” Scott added. “This appears to be a massive and incredibly consequential failure that has misled the American people and covered up the damage done to the American economy by President Biden’s radical anti-business, pro-government agenda.”
“The consequences of the gross failure I have just described, and the horrifically misleading message it has allowed the Biden administration to send the American people, cannot be overstated,” Scott told Beach in the letter, adding that he has “long been skeptical” of BLS reports.
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He recalled that the White House cited those BLS employment projections to assert that their “plans and policies have produced the strongest job creation economy in modern times.”
Yet, added Scott, “this new report shows that to be untrue. While those issues alone were cause for concern, it pales in comparison to the scandal of falsely reporting the creation of more than one million jobs, and I am demanding answers on this immediately.”
Specifically, Scott asked Beach to explain why the BLS report data was so inaccurate, whether anyone in the White House or in any senior position in the Biden administration spoke to Beach about it, and if the BLS has changed its reporting process since Biden took office.
The senator also asked what Beach is doing “to fix the problem and ensure that labor statistics better match the actual labor environment in real-time.”
“It is vital that the greatest economy be driven on data that is reliable and trustworthy,” Scott concluded.
“I will not rest until the American people can be assured that the economic data being reported by the Biden administration is accurate, this issue has been resolved, and any person responsible for this egregiously false reporting has been held fully accountable.”
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