The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services certainly knows its audience. As Adam noted earlier, the agency signed up Andy Griffith to appear in television ads now airing and touting changes to Medicare brought about by the new health reform law.

This has caused a bit of a stir, with five Republican senators sending a letter yesterday to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius – who oversees CMS – expressing their “profound concern” that tax dollars are being used “for campaign purposes.” (Griffith did the ads for free, but HHS spent a reported $700,000 on ad buys on the Weather Channel, Hallmark Channel, Lifetime, CNN and Headline News. Like I said, they know their audience.)

In their letter, the senators write:

We believe this ad is a clear violation of the spirit of federal laws that prohibit the use of taxpayer dollars for campaign purposes. The justification for this ad, as expressed by Stephanie Cutter, an Assistant to the President, demonstrates the clear political motivation for the ad.

Ms. Cutter wrote on the White House blog: “As we worked to pass the Affordable Care Act, seniors were the target of a major misinformation campaign that was designed to scare and confuse older Americans about the real impact of reform….We are committed to correcting the record and ensuring seniors have the information they need and get the high-quality care they have earned and deserve.”

(snip)

The job of the Executive Branch, quite simply, is to execute and implement the law, not re-litigate a political debate. Using the power of the state and the Treasury to advance the agenda of one political party is an abuse that should not be tolerated, regardless of which party is in power.

That last bit was a nod to the fact that in 2004, the Bush Administration came under fire from Democrats for an ad campaign touting the benefits of the controversial Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. (The General Accounting Office eventually found that the MMA ad did not violate the law prohibiting taxpayer dollars from being used as “propaganda.”)

Over the years, in fact, CMS has funded lots of television ads promoting Medicare and they usually run them before the program’s fall open enrollment period, which is perhaps politically relevant, but just coincidentally the same time as election season. Here’s one from the fall of 2008, before Obama took office: