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发帖数: 897 | 1 The conservatives' new rallying cry — Defund NPR — is actually an old
rallying cry, given new life by National Public Radio's firing of political
commentator Juan Williams.
But if history is any guide, the calls to strip NPR's federal funding that
have emerged from the offices of Republican lawmakers and leaders face an
uphill battle. They've tried this before, several times, and it's never
worked.
Republicans have been trying to strip government subsidies from public
broadcasting almost since the inception of the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting in 1967.
Then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich's efforts in the mid-1990s to "zero out"
funds for public broadcasting may have been the most memorable battle, but
Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon went after the subsidies during
their administrations too. President George W. Bush tried to cut funds to
public broadcasting every year he was in office.
In 1997, when anti-CPB fervor was near its height, a measure to eliminate
the CPB from the federal budget by the year 2000 was voted down in the
Republican-controlled House 345-78. And in 2005, when Republicans controlled
both chambers of Congress and the White House, a move to defund the CPB was
rolled back after a coalition of House Republicans voted to reinstate the
money that had been removed in committee.
The latest calls to cut NPR's federal dollars came as conservatives rallied
around Williams, who was fired by NPR for saying he felt "nervous" around
people wearing "Muslim garb" on airplanes.
One thing that makes it tougher for Republicans to succeed: Congress doesn't
directly fund NPR, but rather funds the CPB — which distributes money
through a variety of channels, some of which lead to NPR. But NPR only gets
about 2 percent of its funding from the CPB.
Yet, the forces that make this such an enduring issue for Republicans — the
desire to cut federal spending while simultaneously sticking it to the
liberals who disproportionately tune in — have perhaps never blown so
strongly.
In fact, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) introduced a bill to eliminate federal
subsidies to the CPB in June, long before the current political firestorm.
"It bothers me when I see left-leaning indications in some of their
reporting, but the bigger issue is, even if they were neutral, I would not
want taxpayers to use their hard-earned dollars to subsidize broadcasting,"
he said. "We have hundreds of choices in TV and radio and the Internet, and
maybe one day, a long time ago, that wasn't the case. But we have all these
choices now, and simply don't have to spend this kind of money when we have
trillion-dollar deficits."
While NPR has long bristled at accusations of liberal bias, a recent study
by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press found that 61 percent of
NPR's audience describes itself as progressive, while only 15 percent
described themselves as tea party supporters. The difference between parties
was smaller but still pronounced: 40 percent of NPR listeners described
themselves as Democrats, while only 14 percent called themselves Republicans.
The flap over Williams's firing has played into conservatives' long-held
belief that NPR has liberal bias and an excess of political correctness, and
has added four new co-sponsors to Lamborn's budget-inspired bill on Friday.
"It's added fuel to the fire," he said.
Meanwhile, his offices in talks with the office of Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.),
which announced Friday that the senator, a member of the Senate Commerce
Committee which oversees CPB, will introduce legislation to stop taxpayer
subsidies of public radio and television.
If Lamborn's bill was mainly an act of fiscal responsibility, DeMint's is
plainly a shot in the culture war.
"The country is over $13 trillion in debt, and Congress must find ways to
start trimming the federal budget to cut spending," he said in a statement.
"NPR and PBS get about 15 percent of their total budget through federal
funding, so these programs should be able to find a way to stand on their
own. With record debt and unemployment, there's simply no reason to force
taxpayers to subsidize liberal programming they disagree with."
But if the political goal is to punish NPR for an excess of liberalism,
defunding the entire CPB is a rather imprecise way to do it.
NPR says that it gets only about 2 percent of its annual budget, currently $
161.8 million, from the CPB. However, this does not count the 40 percent of
its budget that comes from member stations, who themselves get $90 million
from the CPB, according to the CPB.
Neither NPR nor the CPB could say just how much of that $90 million in CPB
money goes back to NPR, though a NPR spokeswoman said it amounted to an
average of 10 percent of each member station's annual budget.
Meanwhile, PBS, which has hardly been immune from charges of liberalism over
the years, but which has nothing to do with the current controversy, would
also be punished.
And other federal sources of NPR funding, such as National Endowment for the
Arts grants, would, under the proposed legislation, remain. |
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