McConnell hits Obama for healthcare ad campaign

“There’s a pattern here that I, and I’m sure many other Americans, find pretty outrageous at a time of trillion-dollar deficits and a near-$16 trillion debt,” McConnell said Wednesday. “The administration also spent more than $25 million in stimulus funds on grants to a public relations firm — PR firms, ostensibly to do public relations related to promoting the stimulus.”

{mosads}McConnell’s comments come in response to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spending $20 million on a public-relations campaign to highlight healthcare benefits in the Obama administration’s healthcare reform law. The spending has drawn strong criticism from Republicans. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) sent a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius requesting specifics on the $20 million spending campaign.

“These are just a few of the ways the administration is quietly promoting its own failed policies; how it’s trying to change people’s minds about the president’s policies with their own money,” McConnell continued. 

“We don’t have the money to begin with, and he’s spending it to market his policies?” McConnell said. “Americans don’t want him spending their hard-earned money trying to spin policies they don’t like.”