Paint by numbers — but what if that number is $40,000?
Bills are often cleverly titled so as to become acronyms — for example, the PATRIOT Act and S. 310: the EGO Act, or the Eliminating Government-funded Oil-painting Act.
The EGO Act was introduced by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) to make permanent a law that prohibits taxpayer funds from being used for “an official portrait of a officer or employee of the federal government,” according to the Congressional Research Service. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the average portrait cost for governmental figures at $25,000, with a 2013 portrait of the head of the Environmental Protection Agency costing $40,000.
Is it the single most pressing issue in America right now? Probably not. But identical provisions have been added to the yearly funding bills for fiscal years 2016, 2015, and 2014. The most recent funding bill, which was enacted this past December, expires on September 30, 2016. Cassidy’s bill would make the provision permanent.
“Wouldn’t it bug you if the federal government was spending $40,000 on oil paintings when everyone is tightening their belt?” Cassidy told U.S. News and World Report in 2013. “It reminds me of that picture of Louis the Sun King in all his regality, and you’re aware there are people in France who are so destitute, and yet he’s there in those clothes.”
“Tax dollars should go to building roads and improving schools — not oil paintings that very few people ever see or care about,” Cassidy said.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee reported out the bill in June, so it could now go to the full Senate — but because it was incorporated as a temporary provision in the last government funding bill, Congress may have kicked the can forward on this until the end of the year. The bill has five co-sponsors, all Republicans, though no senator from either party appears to be on record as opposing the legislation.
The EGO Act scored second best in a tongue-in-cheek ranking of bills by acronym quality in The Washington Post last year.
