Business titan and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg popularized the phrase: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” That phrase applies to every major institution in American society, including corporations, government agencies and nonprofit organizations.

We all need clear, verifiable data to make informed determinations about what’s working and what’s not, guiding us as to which efforts should be continued or expanded, or alternatively, diminished or ended. Hard facts should play determinative roles in every manner of decisions, including budgets, staffing levels and product and program designs.

That’s why it’s so dangerous and economically counterproductive that the Trump administration is systematically politicizing — and even dismantling — long-trusted government data collection and dissemination efforts. In August, President Trump fired Dr. Erika McEntarfer from her role as the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after the Bureau reported a national jobs slow-down.

Journalists recently uncovered the news that the Trump administration was unilaterally ending the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 27-year practice of collecting and publishing nationwide and state-by-state statistics on how many U.S. households suffered from food insecurity,........

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