GOP FIGHTING A CULTURE WAR IT CAN NOT WIN

Just last night, members of the local labor community, including
folks from Pride At Work, AFL-CIO and CSEA, volunteered their services
to our local PBS affiliate WXXI.
(photo:  Bess Watts) 

Rochester, N.Y.--  The House of Representatives passed a bill last Thursday that would cut federal funding of National Public Radio (NPR), one of the foundations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).  Rather than focus on creating jobs, Republican lawmakers continue to focus on scoring political points and fighting a culture war they will never win.

HR 1076, which passed 228-192, would also prohibit other public radio stations from using federal funds to acquire content from NPR to broadcast over their own networks. NPR says it earns about 40 percent of its funds through those fees, while the $5 million the network receives in government funds accounts for 2 percent of its revenue.

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado) introduced the bill a week after conservative activist James O'Keefe released a videotape of NPR fundraising executive Ron Schiller saying that the station "would be better off in the long run without federal funding."

Lamborn, who has long supported ending federal funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), said that Thursday's bill targeting NPR aims to reduce the country's deficit by cutting off "non-essential services."

"I want NPR to grow on its own. I'd like it to thrive. Just remove the taxpayers from the equation," Lamborn said on the House floor Thursday morning. He estimated that cutting government funds for NPR would save $60 million a year.

In a press statement sent out before the vote, the Obama administration said that it "strongly opposes" HR 1076. Reducing funds for public radios to acquire NPR content "would result in communities losing valuable programming, and some stations could be forced to shut down altogether," particularly in rural areas where such networks are scarce.

The statement pointed to President Obama's budget proposal, which already includes reductions in funding for CPB, which grants a small amount to NPR as well. Blocking funds to NPR endangers "more than 700 stations across the country, many of them local stations serving communities that rely on them for access to news and public safety information."

Some House Democrats said they believed the bill was a symbolic gesture rather than an effort to reduce budget deficit. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) called it "an ideological attack on the core of public broadcasting under the guise of trying to slap NPR ... the irony is that this is going to really cripple smaller stations and is not going to affect NPR nearly as much."

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-29)

Area Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-29, Western New York) and Henry Waxman (D-California) both disagreed with the GOP argument that defunding NPR would save taxpayers' money.

"The CBO [Congressional Budget Office] has scored this bill," Waxman said. "It does not save a penny. This means that this legislation does not serve any fiscal purpose ... This legislation is not about reforming NPR. It is about punishing NPR."

Before the vote, Waxman sent an impact analysis to colleagues showing the bill's potential impact. "[The] legislation did not go through the normal Committee process, there have been no hearings, testimony, or expert review, and members have little information about its impact," Waxman wrote. His district-by-district analysis projects that HR 1076 "would negatively impact 414 stations across the country ... [serving] listening areas in 280 congressional districts in all 50 states."

Likewise, Slaughter said that the bill "has no effect whatsoever on the deficit, and saves no money, not a dime ... This is a purely ideological bill so our members can go home and brag about what they have done to public radio."

The bill will now go to the Senate for a possible vote, where a majority-Democrat body will tell the American people how the GOP House is wasting taxpayer money by appealing only to the conservative fringe.