Real News From The Blaze:' Did the Administration Ask Contractors to Change Job Loss Estimates to Favor Their Proposed Policy?

The House Natural Resources committee is investigating whether or not the Obama Administration through the Department of the Interior asked contractors to ‘re-examine’ job impact numbers associated with one of its proposed regulations on the coal industry. The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Obama administration officials may have pressured government contractors to change job loss estimates associated with coal regulations, audio recordings reveal.

The tapes show that unnamed officials with the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) asked government contractors to change their calculations of job losses associated with the Stream Protection Rule.

A preliminary draft of an environmental impact statement estimated that up to 7,000 coalminers could lose their jobs under the administration’s “preferred” regulation. After a leaked copy of the report went public, officials asked the contractors to compare job estimates to a model in which another regulation was enforced, rather than the real world numbers.

This is not the first incident when we’ve heard about the Obama Administration possibly attempting to cook the books, as just last week Department of Homeland Security's Border Patrol agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers informed The Washington Examiner that they were being told not to make arrests of noncriminal illegal immigrants, and not to patrol areas of high traffic along the roughly 2,000-mile U.S. Southwest border.

The Department of the Interior case was discussed on "Real News" Monday, as well as other instances of questionable numbers and "bullying tactics" from the White House to its political and executive subordinates: