3 . The economy has been growing poorly in spite of what the numbers the government recently released say, ____?didn't they

The sentence you've provided seems to pose a question regarding the state of the economy and the reliability of the government's reported figures. To complete the sentence correctly, you would typically use a tag question. Given that the first part of the sentence expresses a negative statement about economic growth, the appropriate tag question would be positive.

Sentence Completion:

The completed sentence should read: "The economy has been growing poorly in spite of what the numbers the government recently released say, hasn't it?"

Explanation:

1. Main Clause Analysis: The main clause is negative ("has been growing poorly").
2. Tag Question Formation: The tag question generally mirrors the auxiliary verb's format used in the main clause. Since the portion about economic growth is negative, the tag question needs to be positive.

This construction emphasizes the speaker's skepticism about the positive claims made by the government despite the poor economic reality.