In response to Issa Looking Into Census Data Fabrication Allegations:
Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee appeared on The Kelly File, last night, to talk about the bombshell story published in the New York Post, alleging that the Census Bureau instructed employees to fabricate data for the nation’s unemployment reports.
The Oversight and Reform Committee has gotten involved, and is demanding answers from the director of the Census Bureau about data used for a jobs report that showed a suspiciously large drop in unemployment just a month from Election Day 2012.
Chaffetz told Kelly that the investigation would focus on the people in the Philadelphia field office who were reportedly fabricating data – “subordinates were doing this and superiors were condoning it, and if that is true, I’m tellin’ ya, Megyn, that is just not acceptable in this country.”
Asked if this was about “stealing an election”, the Utah congressman answered, “there are implications for Wall Street and how governments are reimbursed at the state level, but remember this data came just a mere thirty days or so before a presidential election….every day, Republicans were pounding on the fact that Obama doesn’t work, the unemployment rate wouldn’t get below 8%, and then suddenly thirty days before the election – it did…”
Responding to the revelation that the Census Bureau is conducting its own internal investigation, Chaffetz said, “the idea that the IG is now involved would lead you to believe that there’s probably something more nefarious than just a writer at The New York Post gone awry…”
He assured Megyn’s audience that they will be very “thoughtful”, “methodical” and “temperate” in their approach, “but it’s a very serious allegation. It’s not just a one-off person, we’re talking about something that escalated…over a the course of years and culminated right before an election.” Chaffetz concluded, “for the truly independent – who were truly trying to make up their mind about Mitt Romney or Barack Obama – I gotta think that this had an effect.”