Posted on 01/31/2017 2:46:21 PM PST by Drango
The chair of a key House Appropriations subcommittee said that the forthcoming White House budget should take aim at bigger deficit reduction targets than the relatively small appropriations for CPB and two endowments supporting arts and humanities.
Even if the Trump administration does target CPB in its first budget, the corporation would most likely survive the challenge, said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), because “there is a strong constituency for public broadcasting in both the House and Senate.”
Cole heads the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, which handles funding for CPB, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In an interview Monday, he said appropriations for all three are only a small portion of the $163 billion in federal spending that his committee oversees. CPB’s fiscal 2016 $445 million appropriation, along with $147.9 million for each of the endowments, total less than $741 million.
A budget blueprint circulated by the conservative Heritage Foundation during the 2016 general election calls for eliminating appropriations to all three. An anonymously sourced story in The Hill reported that Trump’s team is following that template. It calls for “privatization” of CPB and defunding both arts agencies.
In its response to the Jan. 19 article, CPB described the proposal as nothing new. Similar ideas “have been circulating around Washington for years and have been soundly rejected on a bipartisan basis — most recently by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in 2015,” the statement said.
Cole criticized the proposal for pragmatic reasons. “We can’t balance a budget by going after relatively small items,” he said. “If this administration is serious about deficit reduction, then we have to talk about entitlement programs. So far the administration is unwilling to do that.”
Social Security, Medicare and other safety-net programs make up about 59 percent of the federal budget, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Appropriations for CPB, NEA and NEH total less than 0.02 percent of total federal spending.
It’s another matter to consider whether the government should fund public broadcasting, Cole said, adding: “That’s a fair debate to have, but don’t call it deficit reduction because it’s not, and you’re not likely to win that way.”
Trump’s first budget proposal for 2017 and ’18 is expected to be released at the end of February and to summarize the new president’s main priorities for federal spending. The full, detailed budget is expected by late April.
Cole said it’s too early to predict how the new administration’s budget may affect public broadcasting.
“First we need to finish up the fiscal 2017 budget,” Cole said. As for public broadcasting’s appropriation, which is forward-funded by two years, there’s “no way we would change the fiscal ’17 budget” for CPB. That FY17 funding, approved in 2015, is supported by both the Senate and House, he said.
As for the FY17-18 budget, “I won’t say that no programs will be cut,” Cole added. Beyond the GOP majority’s priority to reduce federal spending, there could be pressure to reallocate funding under his subcommittee’s jurisdiction to other agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health. If Congress decides to increase funding to NIH, “then it could become robbing Peter to pay Paul. If NIH is the Paul, who are the Peters?”
Cole said he’s heard “nothing definitive” about the White House following the Heritage budget, which also targets many other federal programs. But he added that Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget, “has very close ties” to the Heritage Foundation. “Maybe he gathered some of his ideas from that budget, but we can’t know for certain.”
Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint — a former congressman who submitted several bills to defund CPB — released a statement last month saying he was “delighted” with Mulvaney’s OMB nomination.
Cole, meanwhile, has been singled out for praise by America’s Public Television Stations. Last year, public TV’s lobbying group presented its Champion of Public Broadcasting Award, an honor reserved for key advocates in Congress and state capitals, to the Oklahoma lawmaker. In announcing the award, APTS President Patrick Butler said Cole’s “extraordinary leadership was instrumental in ensuring that the FY 2016 House Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill included $445 million in level funding for CPB — the first time in five years the House has proposed anything but a zero for public broadcasting.”
APTS honored Vice President Michael Pence as a champion in 2014. As governor of Indiana, Pence restored state funding to public broadcasting, which had been zeroed-out of Indiana’s budget for eight years.
Cole continues to support public broadcasting back home in Oklahoma as well. He listens to KGOU-FM from Norman every morning. “I’m really pleased to see the station expand into other areas,” he said. “A lot of smaller communities like Ada and Seminole have not historically had service and now do.”
Cole particularly enjoys listening to NPR’s Morning Edition. “With public radio I can wake up without someone shouting at me,” he noted.
NPR content “is informative and fair,” Cole said. “I know some people disagree but if they’d listen to the content they’d likely come to another opinion.”
He said NPR and PBS “both perform a valuable service. I support them both.”
And the public that doesn't want to pay for it be damned I guess. Typical Liberal/RINO B.S.
Big Bird is a bipartisan mascot for all that’s wrong with Washington.
“Cole particularly enjoys listening to NPR’s Morning Edition. ‘With public radio I can wake up without someone shouting at me,’ he noted.”
Brainwashing is usually a quiet, peaceful experience, Sir!
The GOP is the opposition party.
Cut one penny at a time and 100 times you’ve saved a dollar. Public broadcasting has long since outlived it’s need for government funding. Let Big Bird fund it.
Why the taxpayer have to pay if it has such a strong constituency.Mr. Cole?
Let them pay for it, not us.
We have been paying for the last 80 years for a negative return.
I don’t want my tax money paying for liberal propaganda.
Oh, is THAT all ...
I'll tell you what. You drop $741 million on the floor and I'll pick it up. Even in San Francisco.
What a bunch of wusses
It seems that there are no assholes like a republican asshole! What a bunch of scumbags! Hey, but keep voting for the ass with the R after his name! There are NO political traitors like an elected republican!
“NPR content “is informative and fair,” Cole said. “I know some people disagree but if they’d listen to the content they’d likely come to another opinion.”
If this is what Clown Cole believes, then he is either on drugs and should be tested or a propagandist for the Socialist-Democrat party.
Hey Cole, pull your head out. We’ll give you a do-over.
That answer was cr_p.
“NPR content “is informative and fair,”
Even if this were true- which it isn’t- what difference would that make? I bet this guy cannot name a single benefit that society derives from NPR. It is a total waste of taxpayer dollars at a time when there are a vast number of news outlets available to everyone.
Defund that shithole.
$741 million = 3/4ths of a BILLION dollars!
Then they should solicit funds from saps like Cole, and stop "sucking the public teat", or go commercial.
Yeah, pretty soon you're talking about real money!
Just remember that a whole lot of liberals will explode because they know that if the watch NPR all day they know everything and the truth and but, if their source is gone, it means nothing happens in the world. They cannot live under such harsh conditions - they will have to form up into soft fuzzy balls and start screaming and protesting.
Folks, there must be taxpayer funding paying to keep taxpayer funding going on here.
Bless Senator Everett Dirksen—I remember that comment!
More about GOPe/RINO Cole;
Cole spent two years working as a paid consultant for the United States Chamber of Commerce, but his primary involvement in politics was as a political consultant for candidates. Along with partners Sharon Hargrave Caldwell and Deby Snodgrass, his firm (Cole, Hargrave, Snodgrass and Associates) played a large part in the reconstruction of Oklahoma’s political landscape, and backed a number of candidates that took office during the Republican Revolution of 1994. Among their clients have been Keating, J.C. Watts, Tom Coburn, Frank Lucas, Mary Fallin, Wes Watkins, Steve Largent, former Mississippi congressman Chip Pickering, and Hawaii governor Linda Lingle.
He graduated from Grinnell College in 1971 with a B.A. in history. His postgraduate degrees include an M.A. from Yale University (1974) and a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma (1984), both in British history. Cole’s PhD thesis was entitled Life and labor in the Isle of Dogs : the origins and evolution of an East London working-class community, 1800–1980. Cole did research abroad as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow and was a Fulbright Fellow (1977–78) at the University of London. He was a college professor in history and politics before becoming a politician.
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