Opinion: The Trump administration’s war on statistics isn’t slowing down
By Catherine Rampell Catherine Rampell Columnist covering economics, public policy, politics and culture Email Bio Follow Columnist May 23 at 7:01 PM Don’t like the numbers? Invent new numbers instead.Or just put the squeeze on the number crunchers themselves.
It’s reminiscent of another proposal the administration made this month, relating to how we measure poverty. That’s also a technical, boring-sounding, deep-in-the-weeds change that most of the public won’t notice.But over time, the change would reduce the number of Americans officially counted as poor — not because they’ve started earning more money but because this technical, boring-sounding change would redraw the line for who is in or out of poverty.
When directly manipulating official government measures isn’t an option, the administration can also mess with the data-collection process. Significant population undercounts and otherwise inaccurate data can be expected to result, and the consequences of these distortions would be far-reaching. An inaccurate count would skew congressional representation and the allocation of hundreds of billions of federal dollars each year. It would also warp the many other public and private data measures that use the census as a baseline.
Its researchers compile and analyze data related to crops, yes, but also poverty, food stamps, trade and climate change, among other politically sensitive issues. And right now these economists and statisticians are quitting in droves. That’s because the Trump administration abruptly decided to relocate hundreds of positions. Workers were told that if they want to keep their jobs, they have until the end of September to move their families to . . . a still as-yet-unnamed new city.
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