Leef offers Trump advice on tightening government’s belt

George Leef’s latest Forbes column highlights “useless, unauthorized spending” that President-elect Donald Trump could target once he takes office.

Let’s take Donald Trump at his word that he means to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C. One aspect of that swamp is the way federal agencies spend money on public relations and outright propaganda.

The erosion of budgetary constraints over time has led to a situation wherein federal agencies (many of which have scant constitutional authorization in the first place) get piles of money to spend as the officials choose. No one should be surprised to find that they like to hire public relations specialists or contract with outside firms for material that makes them look good and their agencies utterly essential to the public welfare.

Recently the Government Accountability Office (GAO) did a study of such spending at the request of Wyoming’s Senator Mike Enzi, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee. The GAO’s report on federal public relations spending shows that government agencies go through more than a billion dollars each year.

Senator Enzi’s statement on the report highlights some of its findings:

Total Executive branch spending on public relations and advertising comes to about $1.5 billion. Agencies spending roughly $1 billion on contracts with PR firms and employ some 5,000 employees who are paid almost $500 more for PR work. Those people are paid quite well – the median salary is $90,000. The agency that spends the greatest percentage of its budget on flackery is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the agency with the highest percentage of PR personnel on staff was the Federal Elections Commission. The agency that has increased its spending on PR the most over the last decade is the one that arguably has the worst image – Veterans Affairs.

Remember that unctuous “Pajama Boy” ad designed to dragoon as many Americans as possible into enrolling in Obamacare? The taxpayers footed the bill for that bit of propaganda on behalf of one of the most ill-conceived fiascos in our history.