A penny saved is a penny sent back to the U.S. Treasury

Reading a Minnesota Monitor article about the expenses for franking by our state's U.S. Representatives, we came across this comparison:

Only four members of the Minnesota delegation -- Bachmann, Keith Ellison, Jim Ramstad and Tim Walz -- reported significant mass mailings over 10,000. The House defines mass mailings as "unsolicited mailings of substantially identical content to 500 or more persons in a session of Congress." Reps. Jim Oberstar and Colin Peterson reported minor mass mailings, and Betty McCollum and John Kline reported no mass mailings during the period covered.

Based on those reports, the cost for Bachmann's first mass mailing last year was 46 cents apiece for printing and postage -- more than double the 22 cents apiece mailings for Walz and Ramstad cost and significantly higher than Ellison's per-piece cost of 28 cents.

The biggest difference was in the production costs of the mailings. Bachmann spent a total of $32,589 with The Franking Group for mass mailings totaling 136,465, for a production cost of 24 cents each -- far beyond what her colleagues in either party spent.

Ellison spent $31,358 with Gold Communications for mass mailings totaling 265,522 -- a production cost of just 12 cents apiece.

Walz' figures show only $2,210 spent on printing production of 101,017 pieces for a meager production cost of two cents each.

Ramstad paid Catterton Printing $15,295 for mass mailings totaling 300,017 -- a production cost of only 5 cents each.

No wonder Walz was able to send $100,000 of his office budget back to the U.S. Treasury with that sort of penny-pinching.  Author Karl Bremer suggests that Bachmann could save money on his teleforums by switching to town hall meetings. Indeed, we're betting that this week's veterans' forums at service clubs in Waseca and New Ulm didn't cost taxpayers much.