That’s right… It has happened. A congressional subcommittee has voted to cut all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting within 2 years.

From the Washington Post:

A House subcommittee voted yesterday to sharply reduce the federal government’s financial support for public broadcasting, including eliminating taxpayer funds that help underwrite such popular children’s educational programs as “Sesame Street,” “Reading Rainbow,” “Arthur” and “Postcards From Buster.”

In addition, the subcommittee acted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — which passes federal funds to public broadcasters — starting with a 25 percent reduction in CPB’s budget for next year, from $400 million to $300 million.

More across the fold…
So what, you say? TV is bad for kids anyhow, right? It is just priming them to become consumers, isn’t it? Well, the PBS kids shows are actually a great way to spread our liberal values. That is the real reason the GOP wants to kill the CPB.

Expressing alarm, public broadcasters and their supporters in Congress interpreted the move as an escalation of a Republican-led campaign against a perceived liberal bias in their programming. That effort was initiated by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s own chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson.

“Americans overwhelmingly see public broadcasting as an unbiased information source,” Rep. David Obey (Wis.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said in a statement. “Perhaps that’s what the GOP finds so offensive about it. Republican leaders are trying to bring every facet of the federal government under their control. . . . Now they are trying to put their ideological stamp on public broadcasting.”

But the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health and human services, and education asserted that the panel was simply making choices among various worthy government programs, and that no political message was intended.

The subcommittee’s action, which came on a voice vote, doesn’t necessarily put Big Bird on the Endangered Species List. House members could restore funding as the appropriations bill moves along or, more likely, when the House and Senate meet to reconcile budget legislation later this year. The Senate has traditionally been a stronger ally of public broadcasting than the House, whose former speaker, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), waged a high-profile but ultimately unsuccessful campaign to “zero out” funding for the CPB a decade ago.

The Democracy Cell Project has a BLOGSWARM on this issue HERE

I posted a diary a month ago on the important work Sesame Street is doing around the world: Culture Wars: How Sesame Street is Helping Save the World

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