The Obama Administration has signed a $20 million contract with top public relations firm Porter Novelli to sell citizens on the “benefits” of the unpopular Obamacare law.
As Sen. Jim DeMint’s office points out, however, the new $20 million taxpayer-funded Obamacare PR blitz is just a drop in the bucket of the total government expenditures to promote government policies.
According to a recent Congressional Research Service Report, government agencies have “spent more than $900 million on contracts for advertising services in FY 2010, a figure that does not include all agency expenditures.”
During last year’s Super Bowl, President Obama’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services dropped $3.1 million on a misleading ad campaign with Andy Griffith to boost Medicare enrollments among seniors.
In 2009, the Obama Administration also spent $26 million in stimulus money to hire Ogilvy Public Relations to set up a “publicity center.”
The $900 million advertising figure does not include “in-house” work by a governmental agency’s internal communications staff. For this reason, the Congressional Research Service says it is “unclear how much the executive branch, let alone the federal government as a whole, spends on communications each year.”
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