Uncle Sam Spends $32 Million to Promote New Currency 

(Washington, D.C.)  According to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, a twenty-dollar bill is not a twenty-dollar bill by any other color unless the government spends $32 million to promote it.  The new currency notes that went into circulation last week feature a colored background along with a new watermark and security thread to foil counterfeiters.  Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today criticized the excessive cost of the promotional campaign.

“The airwaves have been inundated with slick television commercials showing people spending the revised $20 bill.  Either the government thinks Americans are not sufficiently intelligent to believe that a bill with Andrew Jackson’s picture, the words ‘Federal Reserve Note,’ the signature of the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and the number 20 on it is a $20 bill, or Washington just has far too much money to spend,” CAGW President Tom Schatz said.  “With a record $374 billion deficit in fiscal 2003 and a projected $480 billion deficit in fiscal 2004, it can’t be the latter reason.  It must be the lack of respect the government has for taxpayers.”

Bureau officials claim the ad campaign is necessary to prevent confusion for cashiers, foreign businesses and programming of domestic vending machines.  They worry that a bumpy transition could threaten public confidence in U.S. currency and possibly destabilize the national and global economies.

“The newly colored $20 bill is clearly a $20 bill from the U.S. Treasury.  The cost of the government’s ad campaign is equal to 74 percent of all the counterfeit money circulated in the United States in 2002.  Surely, there is a more cost-effective way to educate the American public.  In fact, it is not the responsibility of government to build immediate awareness among the cash-handling public.  Private companies have a strong incentive to educate their employees and customers about accepting the new currency.” Schatz continued.

Not everybody lost money from the deal.  The Burson-Marsteller marketing firm made a handsome profit by producing two TV commercials, a billboard in Times Square; taxi toppers in four major cities; posters in Amtrak’s Acela trains and placements in three mass transit systems.  Furthermore, an extensive foreign outreach program is in the works.  New designs for the $50 and $100 notes are scheduled for 2004 and 2005, pushing the total cost for the three promotions to $53 million over five years.

“Swimming in a $374 billion budget deficit, this is exactly the kind of exorbitant expense that Uncle Sam needs to avoid,” Schatz concluded.  “There is still time to throw taxpayers a life raft.  Bureau officials should learn from their mistakes and scale back – or eliminate – the splashy introduction planned for the $50 and $100 bills.”

Citizens Against Government Waste is the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.