Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) will introduce a bill this Friday in the U.S. Senate to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
From Newsmax:
“As Congress considers ways to close the $1.6 trillion deficit, cutting funding for the CPB has even been proposed by President Obama’s bipartisan deficit reduction commission,” he notes. “Instead, Mr. Obama wants to increase CPB’s funding to $451 million in his latest budget.”
Senator DeMint noted in the Wall Street Journal recently complaints about needing taxpayer dollars to survive coming from PBS/CPB/NPR are unfounded:
Last year, for example, the Open Society Foundation, backed by liberal financier George Soros, gave NPR $1.8 million to help support the latter’s plan to hire an additional 100 reporters. When NPR receives million-dollar gifts from Mr. Soros, it is an insult to taxpayers when other organizations, such as MoveOn.org demand that Congress “save NPR and PBS” by guaranteeing “permanent funding and independence from partisan meddling,” as the liberal interest group did last month. It was even more insulting when PBS posted a message on Twitter thanking MoveOn.org—the group that once labeled Gen. David Petraeus as “General Betray Us”—for the help.
The best way to stop the “partisan meddling” in public broadcasting that MoveOn.org complains about is by ending the taxpayers’ obligation to pay for it. The politics will be out of public broadcasting as soon as the government gets out of the business of paying for it.
In the House, Rep. Doug Lamborn has been a big leader in the fight to save taxpayer dollars from being frivolously wasted on public broadcasting. Hopefully Rep. Lamborn and Senator DeMint are able to find success in this latest effort. The battle to defund public broadcasting is not an easy one as left-wing tax-and-spenders love claiming that it’s an attack on Elmo and Big Bird.
It’s time for PBS/NPR/CPB to stand on their own. If they can openly brag about being able to pay for a majority of their budget without using taxpayer money, then they can find a way to pay for the entire thing.
Sometimes you have to make cuts–but if their programming is as desperately needed as they claim it is, private capital will be their to help them succeed.
(H/T Dr. Bill Smith for the news)
