The Trump administration cut funding for advertising Obamacare enrollment, but that doesn’t mean the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services hasn’t found new money to spend on public relations over the past two years. It’s just that millions of dollars the agency is spending are going to Republican communications consultants, and one of their specific goals is placing puff pieces on CMS Administrator Seema Verma, Politico reports.
CMS already has its own communications staff of career employees, but Verma has bypassed them with a $2.25 million contract with a major public relations firm that has then outsourced to other consultants. Another $1 million was spent before that contract. Subcontractors include Pam Stevens, who “specializes in setting up profiles of Republican women” (puff pieces); and Nahigian Strategies, one of the principals of which headed Trump’s transition team for a hot second.
”Some career CMS staff have voiced their concerns to political appointees within the agency about routing taxpayer dollars to GOP consultants and helping a federal official like Verma improve her personal brand, said two individuals aware of those conversations,” Politico’s Adam Cancryn and Dan Diamond report. And “The head of Obamacare doesn't need outside consultants to get reporters to talk to her,” a CMS official told them anonymously. “The job pitches itself.”
But apparently Verma wants herself to be pitched for interviews “emphasizing her personal life and her role as a prominent Republican woman." Add that to the traditional Trump administration suspicion of career civil service employees and the mandate to siphon federal money into the pockets of Republican operatives, and this all makes way too much sense.
