Obama Signs Order to End to Promos, After Spending $3 Million of Medicare’s Money on Andy Griffith

From the White House this morning, “President Obama will sign an Executive Order that will cut waste and promote more efficient spending across the federal government.” Top targets are to include: reduced spending on travel and conferences, cutting duplicative and unnecessary employee information technology devices, ending unnecessary printing, and stopping swag or government promotions.

Obama’s new effort goes beyond the tired retread of what has now become a presidential rite of passage to “root out waste,” and entered a whole new realm of hubris. This executive order comes almost a year after the Obama administration green-lighted a $3 million promotional advertising campaign featuring Andy Griffith to “sell” seniors on the new health-care law’s changes to Medicare.

The sheer irony is that after last year’s wasteful Medicare advertising campaign, seniors decided they liked the law even less. We can only hope the American people will come to a similar conclusion a year from now when evaluating President Obama’s policies.

— Michael Ramlet is director of health policy at the American Action Forum.