Waste of the Day: Throwback Thursday – Raising Christmas Tree Awareness

Topline: There are few families that need an advertisement to remind them to purchase a Christmas tree in December. But, in 2011, officials at the Department of Agriculture decided an expensive marketing campaign was somehow necessary.

Reminding people to buy a Christmas tree?

The USDA awarded $75,000 for Michigan State University, the Michigan Christmas Tree Association and two other agriculture groups to launch “Make it a Real Michigan Christmas,” encouraging local families to ditch their artificial tree for a real one. The money would be worth $107,000 today.

That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses. 

Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.   

Coburn’s Wastebook 2011 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth nearly $7 billion, including $75,000 worth of holiday cheer.

Key facts: As of 2011, Michigan’s Christmas tree industry was the third-largest in the nation, with 3 million trees sold for $40 million in revenue each year.

Still, the USDA helped launch an advertising campaign to reinforce the “Christmas tradition” of buying a real tree, not an artificial one. A 2011 press release says the campaign also aimed to show consumers the “negative environmental implications of buying artificial trees.” But there is no consensus on whether that claim is true.

Little evidence of impact

The campaign also paid to have poinsettia plants in each of the 132 private suites at Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions football team. The expense likely did little to help the average family get in the holiday spirit, as Lions suites cost up to $12,000 per game in 2011.

There is little evidence that “Make it a Real Michigan Christmas” had a large impact. Michigan State researchers in 2013 wrote,

Few attitudinal changes about Christmas trees and poinsettias were observed over the study period and compared to prior studies.

Today, Michigan remains the third-largest Christmas tree grower in America, the same as in 2011.

The grant was one of several Michigan received in 2011 from the USDA’s Specialty Crop block grant program, totaling $1.3 million. Other awardees included:

The Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board, and

Researchers working on a study called “A Scientific Look at the Power of Tart Cherries.”

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Summary: If Santa Claus can pull off Christmas miracles without a cent of funding, there’s no reason the federal government can’t lay off the spending for just one day.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.