House Appropriations Marks CPB In Continuing Resolution To Cut Federal Budget
The elimination of public broadcasting support is provided for in a House Republican continuing resolution that proposes the largest spending cuts in history. The House Appropriations Committee introduced the resolution as a plan for cutting spending by over $100 billion from President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2011 request. Action on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will have little effect on budget-cutting but great implications for the industry, some public broadcasting supporters said.
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To draft the resolution, HR-1, subcommittees “weeded out excessive, unnecessary, and wasteful spending,” said Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky. The bill must be passed before the current funding measure expires March 4, “to avoid a governmentwide shutdown and so that we can begin our regular budgetary work for this year,” he said.
House Republicans are choosing “Big Oil over Big Bird,” while the president “is making innovation and education the cornerstones of America’s economic recovery,” said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. “Despite draconian cuts in the Republican spending bill that would zero out funding for the CPB, President Obama’s budget protects current funding levels and ensures that American households will continue receiving high-quality educational programming for youth."
Elimination would be a significant blow “to nearly 900 public radio stations that serve the needs of more than 38 million Americans with free over-the-air programming they can’t find anywhere else,” NPR President Vivian Schiller said. It would also affect “thousands of jobs in rural, suburban and urban communities throughout the country already reeling from a faltering economy,” CPB said.
PBS and the Association of Public Television Stations said the effort to zero out funding overlooks the effect that public broadcasting has on education and job training. America’s children “will feel the greatest loss, especially those who can’t attend preschool,” PBS President Paula Kerger said. “PBS’ educational media helps prepare children for success in school and opens up the world to them in an age-appropriate way.” The notion that defunding CPB will do much to fix the budget is a misconception, APTS President Patrick Butler said. “Eliminating the investment in public broadcasting would have a microscopic effect on the federal budget deficit but a devastating impact on local communities nationwide.”
Members of the Congressional Public Broadcasting Caucus warned against taking away a resource that provides a lifeline to citizens in rural communities (CD Feb 7 p9). “A number of people calling for this talk about the cable systems and all the channels, but everybody doesn’t have cable, especially in rural areas,” said John Harris, CEO of Prairie Public, a TV and radio network serving people in North Dakota and northwest Minnesota. “Without the federal part [of funding], it’s going to make a huge difference, and the quality of the local services is definitely going to be affected.” But “decades of reckless Washington spending” has put Congress at a crossroads, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said in an e-mail. “Some worthwhile projects may go unfunded for a time, but that is the unfortunate price we must pay for Washington’s past irresponsibility,” said Jordan, the Republican Study Committee Chairman, who has a bill proposing defunding of CPB (CD Jan 24 p12).
"The naysayers would have been smarter to try to cut back funding by some reasonable seeming amount rather than eliminate it altogether,” said Larry Grossman, a former PBS president. “It would be my assessment that those who really want to kill public media altogether have overreached."
Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., is hopeful that Republicans and Democrats can work together toward a common sense solution: “The House Public Broadcasting Caucus has a history of bipartisanship, which has helped ensure the future of Public Broadcasting at the local level.”