Trump $ 1.1 billion discounts at NPR, PBS adopts the house controlled by the Republican
The House of Representatives voted on 216-213 Thursday evening to approve $ 9 billion in spending discounts, including $ 1.1 billion from the company for public broadcasting – representing the entire two years of federal funding for NPR and PBS.
The passage of the house under republican control sends the bill to the president’s office to sign.
The Senate had voted on Wednesday 51 to 48 to reduce the already approved spending, which also reduces $ 8 billion in foreign aid, including the American agency for international development and global health and refugee assistance programs. The Emergency Plan for the Relief of AIDS, known as PEPFAR, was spared a reduction of $ 400 million in a concession to win the votes of the Republican Senators who have opposed the reduction of popular financing of the Bush era.
The White House asked for the package, which adopted the two rooms with only republican votes – including some which have publicly expressed their concerns about the evisceration of public media. Two Republican representatives, Brian Fitzpatrick de Pennsylvania and Michael Turner of Ohio, opposed the measure in the Chamber, while the Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska also voted against. The Democrats were unified in both chambers.
The $ 1.1 billion for the CPB is the total amount it was to receive in the next two years. The White House criticized the system of public media as biased and useless, and asked earlier this year to end the members of its board of directors, notably the president of Sony Pictures, Tom Rothman and two others.
The CPB distributes most of the funds to more than 1,500 public television and radio stations, the rest going to national public radio and to the public radio service.
NPR and PBS should withstand the cuts, because only a small percentage of their funding comes from taxpayers. But the cuts will force the programming and the reductions of the workforce in many local stations this fall, certain public stations receiving up to half of their global budgets from the public distribution company.
