Romney’s Support For Zeroing Out Public Broadcasting Allocation Spurs Both Encouragement, Concern
With movement in a House Appropriations subcommittee and comments from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney supporting efforts to eliminate funding for public broadcasting, lawmakers on both sides of the issue said they're motivated to continue their efforts. Romney said in an interview with Fortune this month that if elected, he would end the public broadcasting subsidy, among other government subsidies. Executives in the public broadcasting industry said they're remaining active in working with Congress to keep the funding intact.
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Some lawmakers who have championed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting allocation said targeting that funding is ideological. “Once again, the GOP is targeting the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR as part of a radical ideological agenda to eradicate informational sources that millions of Americans rely on every day,” said Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., in response to Romney’s comments.
Romney’s comments are “extraordinarily disturbing,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore. “We've never had a major candidate for president vowing to eliminate the critical federal support for public broadcasting,” he said. “If the rest of the budget had been handled the way public broadcasting had been the last couple years, there would be a half trillion dollars of spending that had been reduced.” Blumenauer said the threat is “the worst we've seen to public broadcasting in my 16 years in Congress.” Blumenauer, who heads the Public Broadcasting Caucus, said the caucus has been affected by partisanship: “As it’s become more polarized an issue this year, there has been much less formal caucus activity because most Republicans didn’t want to deal with it or wanted to eliminate it. I've had some Republicans who actually care about public broadcasting tell me they're concerned that if they take a higher profile position, they're going to pay a price from Tea Party people in their primaries."
The approval last month by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health, Education and Human Services and Related Agencies to zero out funding for NPR and CPB in 2015 (CD July 18 p14) underscores the support in Congress to cut wasteful spending, said Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo.: “Because there is strong bipartisan support for cutting unaffordable and wasteful government spending, it is no surprise that Governor Romney shares that goal.” Lamborn circulated a letter to members of the House Appropriations Committee in May urging an end to CPB funding (CD May 11 p13): “I welcome the Governor’s support in my efforts to protect taxpayer dollars from going toward non-essential services, such as public broadcasting.” While past efforts to zero out funding failed, Lamborn said the defunding effort can be successful “with a new president and Senate."
PBS CEO Paula Kerger said Romney’s comments are “extremely disappointing.” Eliminating funding would have almost no impact on the nation’s debt, she said. “We understand that these are challenging times, however, public broadcasting has already sustained a 13 percent cut in its federal funds over the past two years. More severe cuts would be crippling."
NPR and its member stations have been on high alert for several months, said Mike Riksen, policy and representation vice president. “All of our stations are engaging in meetings with members of Congress to demonstrate how effective that federal investment is in serving their communities.” Stations should continue to work with the representatives in their coverage areas, said Steve Bass, Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) president. The best thing to do is to “make sure they understand the kinds of programs and services you offer and the value of that to people, and that the impact on those people would be significantly reduced or lost” without government funding, he said.
Losing the government subsidy would severely impact public broadcasting stations, especially ones serving rural populations, said Bass. OPB serves very small towns “where you don’t have commercial TV and radio operations serving them in some cases,” he said. “You can’t do that without some sort of subsidy model.” Without federal funding, OPB would have to choose between serving people in remote areas or cutting back on its programming and services “that people value in order to continue to serve the same area,” he said. The problem would disrupt the entire public broadcasting ecosystem, Bass said. Public broadcasting isn’t just a group of isolated stations, he said: “We work together to fund national programming and interconnection systems and infrastructure to deliver programs across the country.” If some stations can’t participate due to a lack of federal funding, “the entire system is weakened,” he added.
Riksen said he doesn’t see the developments as an increase in momentum for ending the subsidy. “It’s just another indication that those who think funding for public broadcasting is inappropriate are serious and persistent,” he said. “We've been in this arena where either part or all of our funding has been threatened … and that’s why I think it’s worth repeating that we've been in a state of pretty high alert for many months and working very aggressively to counter those efforts and to justify this federal investment.”