Congressman Michael G. Oxley
Fourth Ohio District
Oxley-Shadegg Amendment to
Reduce CPB Spending by One Percent
- The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) receives an annual federal appropriation, which it funnels to public broadcasting entities around the country. Additional taxpayer funds flow to public radio and television stations from other federal and state grant programs.
- However, public broadcasting receives most of its revenue from nonappropriated sources, such as corporate underwriting, private donations, and royalties from the marketing of licensed merchandise. CPB funding makes up approximately 14% of public broadcasting's budget.
- Last year's appropriations measure increased CPB's line item by $10 million. This year's Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill increases CPB funding by another $15 million, to $365 million.
- The CPB's last authorization expired in 1996.
- Last year, it was discovered that public broadcasting stations around the country had been sharing lists of their donors with partisan entities, in a widespread practice going back several years. The personal privacy of tens of thousands of donors was compromised in the process.
- In addition, in 1997 it was discovered that senior executives at NPR and PBS had evaded a statutory cap on their compensation by granting themselves regular bonuses of up to $45,000 a year. Rather than resolving to comply with the law, they hired expensive lobbying talent to have the cap lifted. Public records show that PBS paid Covington & Burling alone $60,000 to get the cap removed. A provision eliminating the cap was slipped into a 1998 appropriations measure.
- As former Congressman Bill Paxon said at the time, "It's outrageous that PBS hired a lobbyist, spending more taxpayer money to get more taxpayer's money to their executives."
- Public broadcasters have squandered their federal subsidy on other questionable activities. Last year, it was revealed that PBS headquarters in Old Town Alexandria employs a professional masseuse as part of its "preventative health" program.
- Despite claims of underfunding, public broadcasters are branching out into "new media." NPR's president recently stated that NPR intends to expand into Internet ventures, satellite radio, and digital cable, saying, "We could think of ourselves as a multimedia company." NPR plans to establish satellite radio ventures with $1 million in funding from the CPB. Should taxpayers really be forced to subsidize a "multimedia company?"
- In another "new media" venture, CPB has "invested" $650,000 in tax dollars in Public Interactive, Inc., an online content developer. Is this a legitimate part of CPB's core mission?
- The Oxley-Shadegg amendment would trim 1% from the appropriation for CPB, saving taxpayers $3.65 million. Even with the amendment, CPB's line item would still increase $11.35 million over last year's measure.
- To make up for a slight reduction in the windfall they anticipated in this year's appropriations bill, public broadcasters might try cutting out the masseuse, the lobbyists, the speculative new media ventures, or other spending having nothing to do with providing over-the-air educational programming to the American public.