Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) launched a wide-ranging investigation into the Obama administration’s public relations and advertising spending Tuesday, sending information requests to 11 federal agencies.

The top Members on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management sent letters obtained by Roll Call to agencies asking for an accounting of all “contracts for the acquisition of public relations, publicity, advertising, communications, or similar services” dating back to Oct. 1, 2008, four months before President Barack Obama was even sworn into office.

“Over the past three years, we’ve seen accounts of wasteful federal spending on PR contracts to defend the administration’s unpopular policies,” a Portman aide said. “This investigation will further probe this administration’s use of taxpayer-funded spin.”

Though some, especially Republicans, might view the inquiry as a political attack on the administration in an election year, aides to McCaskill said that the oversight request is consistent with the former Missouri state auditor’s commitment to responsible and effective government. McCaskill is locked in a tight race for re-election herself and has been attempting to distance herself from Obama and the Democratic Party.

Still, aides suggested the initiative is a natural outgrowth of the committee’s work last year in investigating a $234,000 contract awarded by the General Services Administration to a Kansas City, Mo., public relations firm, Jane Mobley Associates, to deal with the fallout of a chemically contaminated federal complex in Missouri.

“Claire’s always been independent, and this is a body of contract oversight, where [if] we see something, we’re going to go after it,” McCaskill spokesman Trevor Kincaid said. “For Claire, good government is not a partisan thing.”

McCaskill and Portman are seeking detailed information on the contracts, including contract numbers, dates of the awards, names of the contractors or any subcontractors, the types of competition, the costs of the contracts, a “brief description of the contract scope and the work performed” and the agency policies or projects supported by the contract.

The information requests were sent to the heads of the Housing and Urban Development, Energy, Justice, Health and Human Services, Defense, Labor, and Agriculture departments, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Environmental Protection Agency and the National Labor Relations Board.

The agencies have been asked to comply with the subcommittee’s request by March 16.

Sources in both parties indicated Portman approached McCaskill with the idea but that the Missouri Democrat was enthusiastic about the subcommittee’s opportunity to get a broad view of how the White House has been using federal funds to pursue public relations opportunities. Though they concede that what the administration is doing likely is legal, committee aides said it is the panel’s responsibility to hold the government accountable and ensure that funds are being used effectively.

Senate pushback against the White House and how it spends funds to promote its own initiatives is not novel, however. In March 2005, Democratic Sens. Ted Kennedy (Mass.) and Frank Lautenberg (N.J.) sent a letter to President George W. Bush repudiating the use of taxpayer funds by agencies to produce and publicize what they said were misleading video releases. Earlier that year, the two Senators proposed legislation to permanently ban taxpayer funds for “propaganda,” and they asked the Bush administration to return the almost $240,000 the Education Department paid conservative commentator Armstrong Williams to tout No Child Left Behind.

Asked Tuesday about the inquiry into the current White House, Lautenberg said he believed the circumstances surrounding his efforts were different.

“There’s a difference, and, of course, I carry a bias, but in my recollection, I don’t think there’s anything that the Obama administration is doing that didn’t have some public benefit. And, as I remember, going back to 2005, I don’t remember any of the benefits that their propaganda might have brought,” the veteran New Jersey lawmaker said.

That, of course, is the key question facing lawmakers who launch these sorts of inquiries: where to draw the line between the appropriate use of funds for public education and general information and the inappropriate use of dollars to promote a White House’s political agenda.

Aides on the subcommittee say they are not yet sure of the answer to that question and that it will be clearer if the Obama agencies comply. But Republicans say two reports helped pique their interest: one in 2010 from House Government and Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), which Senate sources say was not comprehensive, and another effort last year from the conservative group Judicial Watch, which obtained documents from HHS on its PR spending through the Freedom of Information Act in 2011.

Lautenberg dismissed the idea that the Obama administration has committed any wrongdoing.“It’s not raw politics, which these folks have a way of doing for a long time,” he said of Republicans