Buried in the interior appropriations bill headed to President Obama’s desk is a big spending increase for a controversial agency that his White House staff aims to use as artistic cover for creating political propaganda. National Endowment for the Arts’s annual spending goes from $155 million to $167.5 million, the most since the Clinton administration. A mere $12 million in a budget with $1.4 trillion in deficits might seem trifling. But documents obtained by Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act request leave no doubt that Obama aides meant to put those tax dollars to work paying “artists” to create posters and other propaganda paraphernalia supporting the Obama agenda.

As The Examiner reported Friday, the documents made public by Judicial Watch include a series of e-mails from White House associate director of public engagement Kalpen Modi, whose boss is Valerie Jarrett, director of the Office of Public Engagement and a close Obama confidant. Modi worked with then-NEA communications director Yosif Sergant planning an Aug. 10 telephone conference call hosted by Sergant. The purpose of the call, moderator Michael Skolnik explained at the outset, was to encourage participants “to get involved in things thatwe’re passionate about as we did during the campaign but continue to get involved in those things, to support the president’s initiatives …” Skolnik, political director for hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, told conference participants that he was asked “by people in the White House and folks in the NEA” to organize the call, which was joined by officials representing 21 arts groups around the country.