Posted on 05/14/2012 10:47:05 AM PDT by jazusamo
(CNSNews.com) – Two conservative lawmakers are teaming up to urge appropriation leaders in the House and Senate to defund the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB), which is asking for $445 million advance for FY 2015.
This week, Sen. Jim Demint (R-S.C.) and Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) each sent letters to the heads of the appropriation committees, saying defunding the entity “should be one of the easiest decisions to make,” while searching for cuts in a government $15 trillion in debt.
“CPB’s requested appropriation represents no reduction from its prior year appropriation level,” Demint and Lamborn write. “While so many Americans are making sacrifices around the country to make ends meet, CPB appears unwilling to do the same.”
They allege CPB’s budget has “exploded,” increasing by nearly 31 percent over the last decade, and are now calling to defund its taxpayer funding while its FY 2013 appropriations bill is still on the table. The lawmakers note that between 2001 and 2012 CPB’s funding increased from $340 million to $441.1 million.
CPB is the nonprofit “steward” of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting whose funded programs are distributed through National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
Both members have been long advocates for ending the taxpayer funding of public broadcasting. Lamborn previously sought to defund NPR with a bill that passed 228-192 in the House last March, but stalled in the Senate. That same month, Demint, along with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), introduced a bill that would have defunded CPB.
Demint and Lamborn argue not only is funding the CPB no longer necessary since consumers now have thousands of media choices via the Internet, television, and radio, but simply because they do not need the money.
“According to its most recently available tax filings, Director and President Paula Kerger received $603,403 in reportable compensation in 2010,” they said. They also cite former NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, who received $479,011 in compensation following her resignation after firing Juan Williams last year.
“Certainly, thriving media entities that can afford to pay their executives such generous salaries should not be asking taxpayers to subsidize them,” Demint and Lamborn said.
NPR receives only two percent of its operating funds from CPB, while only 15 percent of PBS’s system’s revenue comes from federal funding, the lawmakers said.
“As you know, the country is more than $15 trillion in debt, and at the end of this year the government is expected to reach its legal borrowing limit once again,” Demint and Lamborn wrote. “We simply cannot afford to continue funding all of the programs that we have in the past.”
“We face many hard choices ahead, but defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting should be one of the easier decisions to make,” they added.
Hey I don’t mind if they sell ads during Downton Abby next season on PBS that prove they have too they selling those hats you see the ladies wear on that mini series in latest PBS catalog and jerwely some of it really nice
B-b-b-but if PBS isn’t subsidized the chillun’ wont have Elmo anymore! They’ll have to watch one of the other 683 cable channels instead, how horrible!
Stop funding PBS. Viewers or advertisers can pay for it if they want.
Every few years, this comes up, and dies
Dream, this is not going to get cut. No way the Congress will cut PBS and NPR. Their time is long gone, they even advertise. Forever the parasite, just like most of left. Constant blood sucking scum. Like most of Congress itself, fat, overpaid, blowhards.
It really is stupid to fund this BS.
I don’t see Liberals subsidizing Rush!
Exactly, it’s really sad because public broadcasting doesn’t need this money.
Add the defunding into a prized liberal bill. That’s what the libs would do.
Add the defunding into a prized liberal bill. That’s what the libs would do.
It really is stupid to fund this BS.
I don’t see Liberals subsidizing Rush!
About time.
If CPB/PBS/NPR thinks their programming is so great, let them compete.
Cut it.
Count me as another vote to end taxpayer funding of broadcasting just as soon as I get there!!!
No they don’t. PBS just doesn’t want competition of any kind.
NPR should be funding the government rather than the other way around.
Don’t they do this every Presidential election?
And NEVER follow up on it?
Cut them loose in the market place with a repayment schedule to return the massive amounts of money put into their establishment by US taxpayers.
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