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| Mark Penn's two firms got $6 million from stimulus for PR campaign |
| 2009-12-10 |
| Nearly $6 million in stimulus money was paid to two firms run by Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's pollster in 2008. Federal records show that $5.97 million from the $787 billion stimulus helped preserve three jobs at Burson-Marsteller, the global public-relations and communications firm headed by Penn. Burson-Marsteller won the contract to work on a public-relations campaign to advertise the national switch from analog to digital television. Nearly $2.8 million of the contract was issued to Penn's polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, according to federal records. Federal records also show that a former adviser to President Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign received nearly $70,000 from that contract to help alert viewers in difficult-to-reach communities that their televisions would soon no longer receive broadcast signals. The adviser, Alfredo J. Balsera, who heads a public-affairs firm based in Coral Gables, Fla., helped craft Obama's Hispanic advertising message. Republicans on Tuesday criticized the federal spending on the advertising project as a waste of taxpayer dollars. They noted that the advertising campaign took place on May 5, only 39 days before the digital television transition was scheduled (June 12) GOP Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Tom Coburn (Okla.) held a news conference Tuesday to blast 100 "wasteful" projects funded by the $787 billion economic stimulus package Congress passed earlier this year, concluding that at least $7 billion of the $217 billion spent through November was wasteful and mismanaged The GOP senators highlighted the direction of the stimulus funds on the same day Obama outlined a new series of proposals for creating jobs that Republicans view as another stimulus measure. The proposals include tax cuts for small businesses, tax incentives for employers to hire new workers and infrastructure spending. The need for additional measures has raised questions over the efficacy of the stimulus package passed earlier this year. White House officials have said the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the stimulus helped to create 1.6 million jobs. White House aides also have noted that the national employment report for November showed dramatic improvement compared to early this year. A White House spokeswoman on Tuesday responded to the GOP report by saying Coburn's previous reports on stimulus spending have been filled with "false or misleading claims." "In the end, even if there are a few unwise projects, it is only a handful out of the over 50,000 projects that have been approved to date," said Liz Oxhorn, a White House spokeswoman. "The real question here is whether Recovery Act critics will at long last acknowledge that well over 99 percent of the projects are sound, effective and working as promised." McCain and Coburn did not show any indication that they knew two Democratic political strategists received funding through the grant. A review of federal records by The Hill revealed Penn and Balsera received money from the economic stimulus program. Burson-Marsteller, which Penn heads as CEO worldwide, won the $5.97 million contract through Young & Rubicam. (Burson-Marsteller has been a part of Young & Rubicam Brands since 1979.) A contract award summary posted on Recovery.gov, the government website that tracks stimulus spending, states Burson-Marsteller was awarded a competitive contract by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to help prepare "unready households for the DTV transition." |
| Posted by:Fred |