Report: WH Used Taxpayer Money to Promote GOP Candidates

October 15, 2008— -- The Bush White House mounted an "unprecedented" political effort to use top officials and taxpayer funds to promote Republican Congressional candidates during the 2006 election cycle, according to a congressional investigation.

The White House Office of Political Affairs deployed roughly 30 cabinet secretaries and other top officials over 300 times to key districts around the country -- often on the government's dime -- to appear at political functions supporting Republican candidates, concluded the probe by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

In 2006, the Bush White House was facing a fast-rising tide of anti-Republican sentiment that threatened to sweep Democrats into the majority in both the House and Senate. In a largely fruitless effort to stem that tide, Bush's Office of Political Affairs dispatched 32 top officials to make a total of 326 appearances supporting 99 Republican candidates, according to today's draft report by the committee, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Ca).

"On average, Administration officials participated in more then one event per day with Republican candidates from January 1, 2006 to November 7, 2006," the report states. "In October 2006, the month before the election, the rate of events increased to three per day."

The Office of Political Affairs (OPA), according to the report, mounted an extensive coordination strategy by developing "target lists" of Republican candidates who were in tight races. These lists were then used to develop recommendations for travel by cabinet secretaries and other top officials to key districts. The OPA would then distribute weekly "Suggested Event" memos, according the report, and "kept close tabs on whether agencies were fulfilling White House recommendations."

Agencies were at times also encouraged to classify the travel for these events as official in order to use taxpayer funds to pay for them, according to the report.

The report quotes one email from an official in the OPA to the White House liaison at the Department of Veterans Affairs regarding a campaign event in Washington State attended by the Secretary of the VA. The report states that in the email the OPA official asked whether there was any "official component" of the travel, explaining: "Needless to say, trying to save the campaign as much $$ as possible."