A member of the House Ways and Means and Budget committees said that the unemployment numbers released Friday by the Labor Department make a statement on their own regardless of whether the stats were cooked or not.

“Look, we’re just going to talk about the facts. There’s 23 million Americans who are unemployed. They’re either looking for a job, they are giving up or underemployed,” Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), also a member of the Tea Party Caucus and conservative Republican Study Committee, said on CNN this morning.

“And so, if we just look at the numbers and take that for what it’s worth, and I don’t know that we have to say much more about whether the numbers have been cooked or not.”

She also encouraged a deeper look at workforce participation. “If you were to add those to those numbers, we’d have about 11 percent unemployment,” she said.

“But let’s look at those numbers a little closer again, we’re looking at 43 state months of unemployment above 8 percent. The president himself in his own remarks during his own campaign said if he did not have this under control by this point in time, he didn’t deserve to have another chance at another four-year term,” Black continued. “…He didn’t use a number when he was campaigning. He just said if he did not have this situation under control. I don’t consider 43 straight months of unemployment above 8 percent and then you have one good month after 43 straight months, that is hardly a trend.”