“I think an investigation is certainly in order,” Padilla told NBC News host Kristen Welker on Meet the Press.
The California Democrat’s comments come two days after Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer over the agency’s new employment numbers showing only 73,000 jobs being added in July and revealing lower employment figures for May and June. Trump claimed the weak jobs report was fabricated by McEntarfer, a Biden appointee.
Affirming his support for an investigation into the firing, Padilla slammed the Trump administration for weaponizing federal agencies beyond the Department of Justice.
“What he’s trying to weaponize is the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” he said. “That tells you a lot about their insecurity about the economy and the state of economic affairs in America because everything that they’re claiming to be true is not true.”
The senator went on to say prices are still increasing despite Trump’s pledge to lower them.
“The American people are feeling it,” he added, noting the president’s sweeping tariff policy places a significant financial burden on working families.
The new tariff rates that Trump rolled out late last week are projected to cost American households about $2,400 of their annual income, according to an analysis by the Yale Budget Lab. Critics fear tariffs will lead to higher prices for imported goods, which will then be passed on to consumers.
Trump’s decision to fire McEntarfer has been met with backlash from Democrats and Republicans alike. Moreover, Trump’s former BLS commissioner Bill Beach said it’s not possible that McEntarfer fabricated the jobs report.
“There’s no way for that to happen,” Beach told CNN host Kasie Hunt on State of the Union. “The commissioner doesn’t do anything to collect the numbers. The commissioner doesn’t see the numbers for until Wednesday before they’re published. By the time the commissioner sees the numbers, they’re all prepared.”
EX-OBAMA ADVISER SAYS TRUMP ‘WAY BEYOND’ NIXON AFTER FIRING BLS COMMISSIONER
The White House defended the president’s decision, suggesting the employment numbers and the downward revisions of the past two months were inaccurate.
“The bottom line is that there were people involved in creating these numbers,” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told Welker. “And if I were running the BLS and I had a number that was a huge, politically important revision, the biggest since 1968, actually … then I would have a really long report explaining exactly what happened. And we didn’t get that.”
