Politics

Issa hits Obama admin for extensive use of ‘propaganda’ to boost health care, other priorities

Jonathan Strong Jonathan Strong, 27, is a reporter for the Daily Caller covering Congress. Previously, he was a reporter for Inside EPA where he wrote about environmental regulation in great detail, and before that a staffer for Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA). Strong graduated from Wheaton College (IL) with a degree in political science in 2006. He is a huge fan of and season ticket holder to the Washington Capitals hockey team. Strong and his wife reside in Arlington.
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Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, is blasting the Obama administration in a new report, charging the administration has engaged in an “unprecedented” propaganda effort to sell the president’s health care and other policies.

“Under one-party rule in 2009, the White House used the machinery of the Obama campaign to tout the President’s agenda through inappropriate and sometimes unlawful public relations and propaganda initiatives,” the report says.

Conservative critics have railed on the Obama White House in a number of specific instances, alleging the administration was improperly using taxpayer dollars for partisan gain. But the report by Issa, Obama’s chief congressional tormentor, is a significant new effort by congressional Republicans to tie these incidents together into a single narrative.

Issa’s report cites as evidence for his charges 11 separate episodes where the report says the administration abused taxpayer resources and, in some cases, violated federal law.

Those include well-known flash points like expensive road signs touting economic progress under the economic stimulus law and an attempt in the early months of the administration to coordinate taxpayer-funded art to boost the president’s legislative priorities.

But it also includes a number of lesser-known episodes including a government-funded online web form allowing users to urge members of Congress to pass health care legislation and the shady online practices of a Justice Department spokeswoman.

One of the Obama administration’s more expensive “propaganda” efforts, according to the report, was a television commercial boosting the then-newly passed health care law. The advertisement features 84-year-old television star Andy Griffith and was designed to sell senior citizens, whom polls show are particularly opposed to ObamaCare, on the “good things [that] are coming” in the law.

“Free check ups, lower prescription costs, and better ways to protect us and Medicare from fraud . . . I think you’re gonna like it,” Griffith said in the ad. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the federal agency responsible for implementing the health care law, paid $700,000 for the commercial, the Issa report says.

Faced with controversy regarding the advertisement over the summer, an administration spokeswoman said it was necessary to ensure “seniors have the information they need.” The administration ended up yanking the ad, though.

Issa in the report charges that the advertisement was “purely partisan in nature” and thus violates federal law.

Another important instance cited by Issa’s report regarding the health care bill involves Jonathan Gruber, a noted health care expert who was revealed to be making hundreds of thousands of dollars from government contracts during the period he was authoring editorials in favor of the health care law and being cited by journalists for his health care expertise.

Gruber was paid by nearly $300,000 by HHS for “technical assistance” as a consultant on estimating the economic impact of the health care law. Gruber did not disclose his government contracts when discussing the health care law with numerous journalists. Articles that relied on Gruber’s testimony and were favorable to the health care law were promoted vigorously by the president himself.
Gruber said after his contracts were revealed that he “never intentionally withheld [his] two HHS contracts from Congress or the media.”

The Issa report compares Gruber’s $300,000 in government contracts to an instance in the Bush administration when the Department of Education paid columnist Armstrong Williams $240,000 to advocate the “No Child Left Behind” legislation.

When it was revealed Williams was receiving taxpayer funds, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decried the “underhanded” tactics, saying it was “not worthy of our great democracy,” the Issa report notes.

Another episode cataloged by the Issa report involves a Justice Department spokeswoman, Tracy Russo, who reportedly surreptitiously authored comments on blogs, online forums and other online media. The Issa report notes that in repeated instances, the Government Accountability Office has ruled that failure to disclose the hand of the government behind public communications constitutes “covert propaganda” and is unlawful.

Faced with the charges in October 2009, the Justice Department denied it had a “blog squad” and said its policy is not to comment on blogs or other online media anonymously, according to the Washington Times.