Cutting Federal Spending, One Portrait at a Time

Conservatives are putting the finishing touches on legislation to end government spending on portraits of cabinet secretaries and members of Congress—artwork that regularly costs taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars per sitting.

Today, portraits are commissioned when committee chairmen retire or are displaced by their party losing control of their house of Congress. The portraits typically hang in committee hearing rooms and can cost upwards of $50,000 each.

Last year, ABC News and the Washington Post both reported the Obama administration has spent more than $400,000 on commissioned portraits for agency directors and cabinet secretaries.

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Proposed legislation in both the House and Senate would reserve the expensive practice exclusively for the president and members of the Supreme Court.

The bills seek to make permanent the moratorium on portrait spending included in the 2014 omnibus spending legislation and represent a renewed effort to restrict excessive art commissions.

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One of the Senate bill’s cosponsors, Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has demanded an end to the practice.

“Hardworking taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill for lavish official portraits, especially when government officials spend more on paintings of themselves than some Americans make in a year,” Coburn said in a press release.

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Steve Ellis, a spokesman of Taxpayers for Common Sense, wonders if the portraits serve any practical purpose. He told ABC News that the artwork bolsters politician’s confidence “but at a cost to taxpayers, and we can’t afford just ego strokes when we’ve got a trillion-dollar deficit and $16 trillion in debt.”

A recent report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office announced a portrait moratorium “would have no significant effect on the federal budget.” The report said taxpayers would save less than $500,000 per year since government does not commission more than 20 paintings in a given year.

Sammie Knox, a prolific portrait painter whose portfolio includes both Bill and Hillary Clinton, argues that there’s more to the issue than dollars and cents. The artist explains that portraits contribute to the national narrative and shouldn’t be defunded.

“I think it’s a bad idea, because portraits are necessary,” he told E.E. News. “It’s how you record your history.”