President's Budget Preserves CPB

Reublicans trying to zero out such funding

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 2/14/2011 2:33:15 PM

As expected, the president preserved funding for the Corporation For Public Broadcasting in the 2012 budget released Monday. That is funding Republicans are trying to zero out in their version of a continuing resolution to continue funding the government through the rest of this year.

The president's own bipartisan budget-cutting advisory committee co-chairs suggested noncom funding might need to be zeroed out as one of the hard choices in tough economic times, but the president had indicated he did not agree with all the recommendations, and that was obviously one of them.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a longtime supporter of public broadcasting who had slammed the proposed Republican cut praised the president, saying the budget "wisely increases funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps to support the production of high quality, informative and educational programming produced by locally-owned and -operated public television and radio stations reaching virtually every household in our country."

Seton Motley, president of Less Government, thinks it's the Republican's who are taking the wiser course. "Nothing turns a watchdog into a lapdog faster than the government buying the dog food," he says. "The Corporation for Public Broadcasting became the pro-government Corporation for Progressive Broadcasting the moment it cashed the first government check. Besides the fact that the spending is unconstitutional, we can't afford it."