Ads For More Spending
by Michael Bates
 The Washington Post recently ran a story about Medicare’s new prescription
drug program. The government will spend $300 million over the next three
years to advertise the benefit. By Thanksgiving, Americans will be exposed
to over $7 million worth of TV commercials about it.
This is a continuation of a long honored Washington policy: Instigate new
programs and then do extensive "outreach" and advertising to encourage
participation.
Politicians and bureaucrats join together in this endeavor. The more people
they can sign up, the more evidence that the program was absolutely,
positively necessary to begin with.
The pols take bows for munificently providing essential human services. The
bureaucrats expand their territory, increase their influence and protect
their jobs.
A classic win-win situation. Except for taxpayers.
The Agriculture Department’s Food and Nutrition Service is responsible for
outreach services for the Food Stamp Program (FSP). Go to its Web site and
you can download or order a variety of promotional materials.
In addition to informational brochures, there are flyers and posters
targeted for specific audiences. You can get a poster or a flyer with kids,
of course. But if you want one with senior citizens, blacks, Hispanics, or
women in wheelchairs, your government’s got you covered.
A common theme of the materials is "Food Stamps Make America Stronger." You
can order magnets, bookmarks and even flying disks (sorry, a limit of 200
per order) that say so. And don’t forget the 200 food stamp pens that can be
requested.
Not everyone speaks English, of course. So the government provides, for
download, information in almost three dozen languages other than English.
These include questions and answers about food stamp eligibility, what
documents are required to apply and "a notice to reassure immigrants that
receiving food stamps will not make them public charges, so that it will not
affect their immigrant status." Like you, I was worried about that.
As you would expect, government’s efforts to pump up the rolls go further.
Millions of dollars in grants are issued every year by the Agriculture
Department for the purpose of increasing awareness and availability of food
stamps.
The Nevada Department of Human Resources was awarded almost half a million
dollars last year to "install 10 kiosks in 8 grocery stores and in 2 welfare
district offices so individuals can be screened for eligibility and apply
for food stamps on-line (the kiosk application would be in both English and
Spanish)."
But citizens will get even more. There will be an "outreach worker in each
grocery store for 3-4 hours each week to promote use of the kiosks, answer
questions, and assist in filling out applications. Finally, the DHS would
undertake a marketing campaign to promote use of the kiosks."
The New Mexico Association of Food Banks scored even more dollars from Uncle
Sam than Nevada. One of their innovative strategies is "training food stamp
champions who will be located in the food stamp offices and who will
communicate the value of the FSP to both customers and staff."
That’s interesting. They need "champions" to persuade those administering
food stamps of their importance? I’d think a paycheck on alternating Fridays
would suffice.
Whenever Washington’s hands out bucks, we know that the Land of Lincoln will
elbow its way to the front of the line. The Illinois Department of Human
Services received just under a million dollars to "build a data bridge that
would permit information collected through web-filed applications and from
automated telephone interviews to be transmitted directly into the DHS
database and processing systems."
The Agriculture Department’s mandate is clearly to sign up as many
participants as possible. One has to wonder if there is an equal emphasis on
making certain that those getting food stamps are eligible for the benefits
they receive. Streamlining and computerizing to make it easier to access
benefits open new opportunities for fraud.
And we’re looking at merely the tip of the iceberg, just part of one program
of one federal department. We’ve not even examined federal grants for
socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers and no, I’m not making that up.
Tax dollars spent for outreach, promotion, public information and other
forms of advertising by not just agriculture, but by commerce, defense,
education, health and human services, housing and urban development and all
the other departments are astronomical.
Mark Twain wrote that "Many a small thing has been made large by the right
kind of advertising." That appears to have become official government
policy.
Mike Bates is the author of Right Angles and Other Obstinate Truths. This
appeared originally in the Oak Lawn (IL) Reporter.
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