Posted on 02/18/2017 9:42:14 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The New York Times reported yesterday that the White House budget office has prepared a list of programs that could be eliminated in Trump’s first budget proposal. Among those programs are the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities and AmeriCorps. From the NY Times:
Work on the first Trump administration budget has been delayed as the budget office awaited Senate confirmation of former Representative Mick Mulvaney, a spending hard-liner, as budget director. Now that he is in place, his office is ready to move ahead with a list of nine programs to eliminate, an opening salvo in the Trump administration’s effort to reorder the government and increase spending on defense and infrastructure…
Many of those programs have been attacked by conservatives since the Republican “revolution” of 1994. Led by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, the House of Representatives at the time repeatedly went after funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whose supporters dragged Big Bird and Kermit the Frog to Capitol Hill to make their case…
Other agencies on the budget office’s list of cuts include the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Corporation for National and Community Service, which finances programs run by AmeriCorps and SeniorCorps. The memo also proposed reducing funding for the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, a nonprofit organization focused on urban development.
You probably don’t have to guess where this is going. Every time someone threatens to cut PBS funding, progressives roll out Big Bird. In fact, Obama for America did this in 2012 after Mitt Romney said he would cut PBS funding. Here’s an ad they created which has been viewed more than 3 1/2 million times:
The real problem with zeroing out these programs isn’t that it will kill Big Bird. Sesame Street could make it in the free market without the $500 million a year CPB gets in taxpayer funds. The real problem is that these cuts, which together amount to $2.5 billion a year, won’t put a real dent in our growing debt.
As the debt clock approaches $20 trillion dollars, it’s important to remember that government spending is overwhelmingly dedicated to two big entitlement programs: Medicare and Social Security. We spend nearly $900 billion dollars a year on Social Security and over $900 billion a year on Medicare and associated programs (Medicaid, CHIP, etc). Since that is where the real money is, addressing our debt without touching these big programs is impossible.
But back when he was a candidate, Trump said a number of times that he would not be cutting Social Security or Medicare. This clip shows about four instances where he publicly promised no cuts to these programs.
Cutting funds to CPB and the NEA could be a symbolic victory for conservatives who have long argued these programs are wasteful. I get that. But unless this is just a first step, one which leads us to eventually addressing the real drivers of our debt, these cuts aren’t going to make much of a difference.
If rich limbs want this stuff, they can pay for it.
I would love seeing PBS cut off.
Praise God!
Thank you, President Trump.
I’d love to see NPR, PBS and the whole damn lot of LEFT-wing media cut from our (taxpayers’) funding!
Does this include NPR?
..won’t put a real dent in our growing debt.
A dent here, a dent there, pretty soon you're talkin' real money.
More importantly, it'd chop off a couple heads of our internal communist hydra.
Bingo!!!!!
Well, then, I guess we really can’t start doing anything to reduce the budget unless we first wait until Congress passes cuts to SS.
Let’s just party until that happens, as Mr. Sexton would seem to state.
NPR is just a laundry for the DNC so why should we pay for it?
FU BIG BIRD
What I really don't like is when they spend nearly 3 weeks working their Beg-a-thon and I miss the shows I like - This Old House, Nova and Nature.
Left wing propaganda arm. Nothing but an army of Leni Riefenstahls.
NPR would undoubtedly continue under private leftist funding, but DON'T LET THEM KEEP THE NAME. The government owns that name. There will be nothing "national" or "public" about a privately owned propaganda outlet.
Zero out all this crap (welfare for the left).
...and hear the lamentations of their pajama boys. (suddenly unemployed, and thrust into the real world)
Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize Leftwing bias and opinion. Either mandate balanced representation, or limit the content to classical music which I’d prefer 24/7.
Ideally, funding NPR should be an option on tax returns.
They need to quit calling social security an entitlement as though it is welfare. It isn’t. And if they ran it like they were supposed to it wouldn’t be part of the budget. It is paid for as a separate item by employees and employers. It should not be part of the debt, deficit or budget.
What it is, as they run it now, is a giant ponzi scheme.
Force them to shut down and liquidate - not just drive on with Soros subsidy.
Let’s see which Dem tries to put them back into the budget and how hard they’ll fight (or what they’ll concede) to keep them. I’m thinking that’s not the hill they want to die on but they haven’t been very rational lately.
Libs flip out in 3, 2, 1....
Defund the Left!
Put them all out on the streets at once - Soros can’t hire them all. They will have to get (shudder) REAL JOBS!
When you cut these Government Agencies, it not just the salaries and their mischief that you save, some of them pass through ten times more money than they spend to operate their Agencies, in grants to leftists outside of Government.
Many more leftists forced to find real jobs!
Virtuous ripples will extend throughout society...
Yup.
We can’t touch popular entitlement programs.
The list of programs targeted for elimination can be done better by the private sector.
What has to be asked: does a program serve a lot of people? If it doesn’t, it shouldn’t be funded.
The deficit can be addressed with a scalpel, not with an ax.
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