Global Policy Forum

By Anne E. Kornblut

With his administration under fire for questionable publicity practices, President Bush explicitly forbade his cabinet on Wednesday to pay commentators to promote his policies. "We will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda," Mr. Bush said at a news conference. "Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet."

Asked whether he approved of using taxpayer money to pay commentators - as Education Department officials did in putting Armstrong Williams, a conservative writer and broadcaster, under contract in 2003 to advance the No Child Left Behind Act - Mr. Bush gave his most direct condemnation to date. "No," the president said.

In recent months, both the investigative arm of Congress and Democrats have objected to government-financed campaigns to promote specific policies, specifically a new Medicare bill and drug enforcement measures. The criticism escalated Wednesday with news that a second columnist, Maggie Gallagher, had been under government contract. That disclosure sparked new demands for broad federal inquiries and coincided with the release of a report from House Democrats finding that federal agencies had increased their use of outside public relations firms.

Ms. Gallagher, a marriage expert who has testified before Congress, admitted she had erred in failing to disclose to readers a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services for writing and advisory work about marriage policy. Her syndicated column runs nationally, including in The New York Post.

But Ms. Gallagher drew a distinction between her work and that of Mr. Williams, saying she had been hired for her expertise, not to spread the views of the administration. "I've been a marriage expert, researcher and advocate for nearly 20 years," Ms. Gallagher wrote about her dual role, which she disclosed in her column on Tuesday after being approached on the subject by a reporter from The Washington Post. "It is not uncommon for researchers, scholars, or experts to get paid by the government to do work relating to their field of expertise."

Her work for the department included helping on an essay that appeared in Crisis Magazine under the byline of Wade Horn, an assistant secretary at the department, and, Mr. Horn said, giving a talk at a brown-bag lunch for department employees about her marriage research."There was never a penny that went to Maggie Gallagher that was being paid to her to utilize her role as a columnist to promote the president's healthy marriage initiative," Mr. Horn said. "Not a penny."

In May 2002, five months after the date on her contract, Ms. Gallagher mounted a strong defense of the $300 million Bush initiative in a column posted on National Review Online. "The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples, educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage, and nurture faith-based and community marriage mentoring and education," she wrote. "I do not expect government alone to turn this problem around. But even small reductions in divorce and unmarried childbearing carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children, not to mention their effect on sustaining the vision of limited government."

As far back as 1992, Ms. Gallagher wrote on similar marriage themes in an Op-Ed article for The New York Times. Ms. Gallagher, author of the book "The Case for Marriage," said she received more than $15,000 to write a report on marriage for a private group that received financing from a Justice Department grant.

Several Democrats and advocacy groups criticized Ms. Gallagher for failing to disclose her government contracts and called for the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to look into the matter. Senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey, both Democrats, also announced plans to introduce a bill, called the Stop Government Propaganda Act, addressing larger questions about agencies' efforts to manipulate coverage of their policies.

Over the last year, pressure has mounted on the administration over its public relations methods, especially the use of "video news releases" - prepackaged news segments with actors posing as journalists - to promote certain policies. In one instance last year, the accountability office ruled that the administration broke federal law against "covert propaganda" by producing and distributing a video news package promoting a new Medicare law. The office made a similar ruling earlier this month about a video, from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, warning of the effects of drug use.

Also Wednesday, Democratic members of the House Government Reform Committee released a report on federal spending on public relations, reporting that Bush agencies spent more than $88 million on contracts with outside firms in 2004. That outpaces the $64 million spent on public relations firms in 2003, which was roughly equivalent to the amount Clinton administration agencies spent on such firms in 1999.

At the news conference, Mr. Bush cast his most direct blame yet about Mr. Williams on the recently departed education secretary, Rod Paige, who left office without admitting wrongdoing just after the controversy had begun to mount earlier this month. Margaret Spellings, the new education secretary, assumed her post this week after Mr. Lautenberg agreed not to block her nomination in exchange for a promise from her to review the controversial public relations practices.

"I expect my cabinet secretaries to make sure that that practice doesn't go forward," Mr. Bush said. "There needs to be independence. And Mr. Armstrong Williams admitted he made a mistake. And we didn't know about this in the White House, and there needs to be a nice, independent relationship between the White House and the press, the administration and the press."