A letter to President Donald Trump urging him to include the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in a defunding (“rescission”) package he is expected to submit to Congress has been sent by a coalition of nearly two dozen conservative organizations led by the Media Research Center (MRC).
After Congress returns on April 28, Pres. Trump is slated to submit to Congress a request to rescind the funding of a package of items for which funds have already been appropriated, but not yet obligated. Accordingly, the coalition’s letter calls for Trump to include CPB, which funnels taxpayer money to PBS and NPR.
The letter implores Trump to, in his rescission package, request defunding of the roughly $1.1 billion of Americans’ taxes that have been appropriated to CPB over the next two years:
“It has come to our attention that a rescission package may soon be sent to Congress. We urge you to include the complete defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and its affiliates, PBS and NPR.”
There are several reasons why it’s vitally important to end taxpayer funding of CPB, the coalition’s letter explains:
- Defunding CPB comports with President Trump’s initiative to cut waste, fraud and abuse across the federal government.
- Taxpayer funding of public broadcasting is unnecessary, given today’s virtually unlimited sources of news, entertainment and educational programing.
- American taxpayers should not be forced to finance the well-documented and egregiously biased content produced by PBS and NPR, which caters to only one side of the political spectrum.
- Taxpayer-funded advantages give CPB an unfair edge over private media outlets that must compete without government assistance.
- CPB refuses to operate in a transparent manner and submit to an independent audit required to uncover waste and mismanagement.
“We urge you to act now to end this misuse of taxpayer dollars. Defunding CPB is a necessary step in ensuring responsible government spending,” the coalition’s letter concludes.
President Trump appears inclined to include CPB in his rescission package. On Monday, the White House published a statement titled “The NPR, PBS Grift Has Ripped Us Off for Too Long.”
The statement provides “examples of the trash that passes for ‘news’ at NPR and PBS” and their “zero tolerance for non-leftist viewpoints.” Included among the examples are four articles by MRC’s NewsBusters division documenting the bias of NPR and PBS.
“Defunding PBS and NPR is the Media Research Center’s top priority right now,” MRC Vice President of External Affairs Dan Schneider said, commenting on the coalition’s letter.
“Part of our multi-pronged assault includes asking President Trump to zero out their funding in a rescissions package,” Schneider said. “This is the most focused and aggressive takedown these outlets have ever faced.”
Rescission may well be “the last, best chance taxpayers will ever have to unburden themselves from these leftist propaganda outlets once and for all,” Schneider said.
Indeed, the rescission approach has four major advantages and is Republicans’ most promising path to defunding CPB, PBS and NPR:
- It can be passed with simple majority votes (half, plus one) in both the House and Senate, where Republicans hold slim majorities.
- It cannot be blocked by a filibuster in the Senate.
- Debate is limited to 10 hours.
- If the Appropriations Committee has not reported a rescission bill after 25 days, any Member can make a motion to discharge the bill from the Committee that would be adopted by one-fifth of the House. The bill would then be subject to a vote to pass by the full House.
The downside: rescission is a one-shot deal. If it fails, it may not be proposed again to rescind funding for the same appropriation.
Thus, for the rescission package to pass, Republican leaders will need to muster the full support of their party members in both the House and Senate.
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