The Philly Phanatic, the big green dress-up mascot for Philadelphia’s pro baseball team, is world-famous. D.C. has its racing presidents.

But did the Border Patrol really need its own dress-up mascot, a German shepherd named Tracker?

To Sen. Joni Ernst, the answer is a resounding ‘No.”

Ms. Ernst, Iowa Republican, has written legislation that would order federal agencies to cut out the mascots.

For good measure, she also wants to curtail the swag — the comic books, blankets, keychains, mugs, stickers and other giveaways — agencies load up on.

“Tote gift bags, life-size teddy bear costumes, and coloring books are something folks might expect in a kindergarten classroom. But it’s not kids, it’s bureaucrats spending like kids to create, design, and hand out swag, coloring books, and play dress up on the taxpayers’ dimes,” Ms. Ernst said as she released a new report Thursday detailing some of her top targets.

They include:

• Agent Teddy, another Border Patrol mascot, this time a bear, who reps for the agency’s southern Texas region. Agent Teddy has been seen at local school career day events.

• Eli and Layla, a fox and some sort of bird, whom the U.S. Mint deploys as its “Mighty Minters.”

• Sammy Soil, an odd-looking clump of grass and dirt mascot created by the Agriculture Department in the 1970s. The department says there are costumes at different regional Natural Resources Conservative Service offices around the county, and they help teach kids “about the many different layers of soil.”

• Vin Vasive, another Ag creation, this time a disturbingly bug-faced humanoid. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has used Vin in videos to warn about the dangers of invasive pests.

• Homeland Security-funded coloring books, which the senator said the department was paying for in 2022, even as it was struggling with a border crisis and releasing more than a million illegal immigrants into the country.

“Instead of using every resource available to secure our border and track down these missing children, DHS bureaucrats used time and energy to release a coloring book for the children of DHS employees,” she said.

Ms. Ernst pointed to a Government Accountability Office study from some years back that calculated federal agencies spent $1.5 billion a year on public relations and ad campaigns.

Another research project concluded federal advertising costs $1.8 billion a year.

Ms. Ernst said some of that is “legitimate,” such as military recruiting. But some is “purely propaganda with little or no value for taxpayers.”