Even if you're not giving to candidates, you're still paying for campaigns

I've never contributed a cent to U.S. Rep. David Dreier, the Republican who represents my district in the U.S. Congress. But I'm helping pay for his re-election campaign against Democrat Russ Warner.

Not that I wanted to.

Here's a sample of the flyer I got in the mail from Dreier's office over the weekend. (Click on the image for a PDF of the whole thing.)

It's pretty standard campaign stuff, themed to veterans' issues for the Fourth of July. Decorated with a picture of the Marine Corps War Memorial, the seals of the service branches and a picture of Rep. Dreier with a U.S. veteran, the flyer also includes a list of the veterans' benefits that Dreier voted for (though not the ones that he recently voted against.)

But it's this little nugget, in the corner of the flyer, that steamed me:

"This mailing was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense."

I understand that the federal government needs to communicate directly to its citizens. And that veterans ought to be getting direct information about benefits and support available to them. But that's the Department of Veterans Affairs' job. If Rep. Dreier thinks that the department ought to be more aggressive in communicating with veterans in his district, he ought to support funding to help them do that.

This is a campaign ad, dolled up with a contact numbers and addresses so that taxpayers can be stuck with the expense. Worse, we got two of them -- one for me, and one for my wife. Couldn't someone at least run a query on the mail-merge database to send just one of these things per address?

Dreier's hardly the first to pull this stunt -- members of Congress have been using their "franking" (free mailing) privileges to stuff constituents mailboxes for generations. Representatives have introduced plenty of bills [PDF file] over the years to restrict or eliminate free mailings, but the junk mail continues.

Even if a flyer doesn't explicitly appeal for a readers' vote, and Dreier's does not, these mailings are taxpayer-funded "branding" campaigns for incumbents. Do we really need to be paying for that?

Robert Niles also can be found at http://www.themeparkinsider.com