MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The president's firing of Labor Statistics commissioner Erika McEntarfer is not the first time his administration has sought to undermine confidence in government data. Under Trump, data on things like greenhouse gas emissions and the demographics of the federal workforce have been slashed or erased altogether. Hayley Brown has been tracking this. She is a research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. It's a progressive think tank, whose contributors have included Nobel laureates. Good morning, Hayley. Thanks so much for joining us.
HAYLEY BROWN: Thank you so much for having me.
MARTIN: Look, I think it's reasonable to say that politicians spin data all the time. Is there something that makes this moment different?
BROWN: There is some historical precedent for this. The closest recent parallel would be Richard Nixon, who tried to oust Howard Goldstein as the assistant commissioner for Labor Statistics, partially because he didn't like Goldstein's numbers and partially because he believed that there was a Jewish conspiracy. But aside from Nixon, Donald Trump is truly in a class of his own.
MARTIN: I'm glad you brought up Richard Nixon, because it's also my recollection that he was - even though he had a more mixed record on civil rights than perhaps people may remember - I mean, he did enforce some civil rights laws consistently, but when he became disturbed that the numbers were showing that housing desegregation was not actually occurring and at some places were resegregating, he actually ordered the administration to stop collecting data on housing segregation altogether. Is that sort of an analogy to what we're doing here?
BROWN: Yeah, I definitely think that Richard Nixon is the most analogous example. One of the crucial differences, though, ultimately, was that Richard Nixon - when a lot of his shenanigans came to light - experienced bipartisan pushback. And we're not necessarily seeing that now, which places us in a much more dangerous moment, ultimately, than we were in with Richard Nixon.
MARTIN: Are there fair questions to be asked about whether federal data is as accurate as we'd like it to be, though?
BROWN: Surveys are never going to be perfect, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys could probably be better if they had more resources when their resources are cut. But that's a far cry from claiming that the numbers are being cooked to be politically motivated. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the result - the statistics that they produce, they're considered the gold standard because they are as transparent as possible about how they calculate the data.
MARTIN: So we just heard from the former BLS commissioner Erica Groshen, and she just described government data as infrastructure for the economy. Could you expand on that?
BROWN: They're really important for researchers like me, but they're also important for an everyday worker who's trying to decide if they want to roll the dice and leave their job and try to find something better. They're especially essential for small business owners who are trying to decide if it's worth investing, if they think that they can afford to expand. It's difficult to track a $30 trillion economy with 170 million workers, and it's a testament to the dedication and the expertise at the BLS that they managed to do that. Replacing it is - would be no easy feat.
MARTIN: Hayley Brown is with the Center for Economic Policy and Research. That's a nonpartisan left-of-center think tank. Thank you so much for joining us.
BROWN: Thank you. I appreciate it.
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