Mary Cheney and prominent Republican consultants linked to Karl Rove, Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee are working to expand or protect the Obamaphone entitlement program, apparently on behalf of the telecom companies that make millions on it.

A secretive front group called Prepaid Wireless Users of America was formed several weeks ago to launch a massive pro-Obamaphone advertising campaign in the D.C. broadcast market.

The Federal Communications Commission program — begun in 1985 and still formally known as the Lifeline Program for Low-Income Consumers — charges a dollar or two per line on every American's phone bill.

The revenue generated by the "Universal Service Fund fee" is then used to pay select phone companies $9.25 per month for each poor person they sign up for a free phone.

As the Lifeline initiative evolved from a landline to cell phone program, its cost doubled in five years to $1.75 billion in 2011, and in some states, the number of phones given out exceeded the total eligible population.

The ads tie the free-phones-for-the-poor giveaway with military service, featuring an elderly veteran speaking while war footage rolls.

The ad's voiceover says "some in Congress want to take away his phone," implying that not having it would endanger him because of his cancer.

The strategy is aimed at convincing congressional Republicans, who support veterans and the military, to back off of their opposition to the Obamaphone program, which has no connection to veteran status and is more commonly associated with welfare. Most Democrats need little convincing to support it.

The ads have been in heavy rotation during the Sunday morning talk shows favored by the Washington policymakers and influencers, as well as during widely-viewed events such as Washington Nationals baseballs games and the nightly news.

The group's bare-bones website, which also features lots of military imagery, includes no telephone contact number, address or other information about the group. An email sent to it by the Washington Examiner prompted no response.

But loosely-knit groups of impoverished consumers don’t make six-figure ad buys. Documents obtained by the Examiner from the FCC show that PWUA shares the address and staff of BKM Strategies.

BKM is a Republican consulting firm comprised of Barry Bennett, who was involved in several major Republican super PACs; Kara Ahern, a fundraiser for Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign and the RNC, and Cheney, a daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Bill Allison, a lobbying expert at the Sunlight Foundation, said the fact that major Republican consultants are promoting an entitlement program shows that “in Washington's mercenary culture, there are few principles that stand in the way of a payday.”

Bennett unabashedly defended the Obamaphone and other entitlement programs. “Of course I support these programs, because I don’t hate poor people,” he told the Examiner.

“As conservatives, we can’t hate Obama so badly that we hate something just because he put his name next to it. If it were called 'Obama food stamps,' would conservatives want to do away with them?” Bennett asked.

Told that his position on entitlement programs put him to the left of politicians on behalf of whom he has worked, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Bennett said, “there’s not a moderate bone in my body.”

Bennett said the group was “consumer-based,” but “I’m not going to give you the list [of funders] because a lot of them haven’t given permission.” He said the ad buy was “less than $500,000.”

He added, “I think we’ve succeeded in what we set out to do, which is change the face of Lifeline.”

The FCC documents say PWUA’s “chief executives” are Bennett, Cheney and Joe Jansen.

Jansen was chief of staff for former Rep. Jeanne Schmidt, R-Ohio. He has contributed blog posts to the conservative group Taxpayer Protection Alliance.

“Wow. Just wow. Big government money ensnares a lot of people,” said David Williams, president of the taxpayers group, when told of Jansen’s new client.

“When you have Republicans and Democrats both talking up a blatantly wasteful program, that’s going to make it really hard to do any meaningful oversight,” Williams said.

The PWUA group paid $16,000 per 30-second ad to run the spots during ABC's "This Week" Sunday political affairs program in the D.C. market.

The FCC paperwork also lists the names Patti Heck, who is president of Crossroads Media, and Main Street Media Group, a Crossroads affiliate.

Crossroads Media has ties to Rove's American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS conservative activist groups and shared an office used by several political shops employed by Romney's 2012 presidential campaign.

Heck, who did not respond to a request for comment, has also worked for the Republican Governors Association and the RNC.

Crossroads Media, Main Street and the Rove groups are based at 66 Canal Center Plaza in Alexandria, Va., along with Restore Our Future, a pro-Mitt Romney super PAC, and Targeted Victory, a company founded by Romney confidante Zac Moffatt, who ran digital operations for the 2012 GOP presidential campaign.

The company that has received the most income from the Lifeline program is TracFone, whose CEO, F.J. Pollak, was an Obama campaign fundraiser. The company spent nearly $1 million on lobbying last year.

TracFone initially responded to requests from the Examiner, but a spokesman refused to say whether the firm funded the ad campaign.

At least one House Republican isn't impressed by the Lifeline ads.

“The biggest beneficiaries of this are the corporations that have been pushing these phones, and now they are spending millions of dollars on an ad campaign intended on making sure they can maintain their position at the government trough,” said Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., who sponsored a bill to eliminate the program.

It is "a poster child of corporate welfare," and “I don’t think Republicans or Democrats can justify the money that has been spent on this program,” he said.

CORRECTION: The Obama campaign bundler with ties to TracFone is company CEO F.J. Pollak. That fact was misstated in an earlier version of this story. The Washington Examiner regrets the error.