House Oversight Eyes Defunding CPB Via Reconciliation at Bias Hearing
House Oversight Committee members in both parties appeared not to move from their existing positions on cutting federal CPB funding after a dramatic Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee hearing on perceived public broadcasting bias Wednesday (see 2503210040). GOP lawmakers appeared to still favor zeroing the money, with some telling us they want to push it through via a coming budget reconciliation package rather than wait for the FY 2026 appropriations process. Democrats backed maintaining the CPB appropriation and mocked Republicans for holding the hearing instead of probing perceived Trump administration abuses. CPB funding opponents got a boost when President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday afternoon that he “would love to” see Congress defund public broadcasters.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
House DOGE Chair Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and other Republicans indicated they were unconvinced by public broadcasting witnesses’ insistence during the hearing that they are working to ensure content is politically neutral (see 2503250067). NPR CEO Katherine Maher repeatedly distanced herself from network content broadcast before she joined the organization, in March 2024, and insisted the editorial team is acting to ensure unbiased content. She said NPR journalists were “mistaken” for not more aggressively investigating conservatives’ claims about former President Joe Biden's son Hunter.
CPB “is using taxpayer dollars to actively suppress the truth, suppress diverse viewpoints and produce some of the most outlandish, ludicrous content,” Greene said. “We will be calling for the complete and total defund and dismantling of” CPB because “we believe that you all can hate us on your own dime.” House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said he doesn’t “think there’s a role for public radio anymore” and that NPR has “abused the privilege that you had with receiving federal funds.”
Rep. William Timmons, R-S.C., told us after the House DOGE hearing he believes “we can definitely” zero out CPB funding via reconciliation. “We’ve got to find a lot of offsets” for GOP priorities in the coming package, including extending 2017 tax cuts, he said. “We're going to be looking at all funding” and “the bias represented” at NPR “and, in certain respects, PBS, warrants looking at it.”
Comer cast doubt on suggestions Congress could end CPB’s funding via reconciliation. “I don’t know that it would qualify for reconciliation,” he told us. Lawmakers can only cut “mandatory spending” via reconciliation and there are questions about whether CPB’s funding instead counts as “discretionary spending.” Lawmakers nevertheless have “got [a] $2 trillion annual deficit that we've got to look at,” he said: “I don't think public radio is where our tax dollars are best spent.”
Democrats Call Hearing a Farce
House DOGE Democrats we spoke with expect Republicans will try to move CPB’s defunding via reconciliation but are uncertain whether such a move would pass muster with congressional parliamentarians. Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, who was the subpanel’s acting ranking member during the Wednesday hearing, told us Republicans want to target CPB in reconciliation because it would be an end-run around the appropriations process, which requires at least some Senate Democratic buy-in to clear that chamber’s 60-vote cloture hurdle. CPB supporters have long used that as a partial backstop against previous defunding bids. Congress can pass reconciliation in both chambers by simple majorities.
“I think [Republicans] certainly have the votes in the House” to defund CPB via reconciliation, but “I don't know that they have them” in the Senate yet, Lynch said. “They've been pretty clear about what they want to do.” House Progressive Caucus Chairman Greg Casar of Texas likewise framed Republicans’ outrage and defunding threats as a convenient way of extending “tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and their billionaire friends.” Cutting public broadcasting “is only a tiny part of what they intend to do to pay for the tax break,” Casar said.
Democrats simultaneously emphasized the serious impact federal funding cuts would have on CPB and treated the hearing as a farce. “I'm sad to see” House Oversight dredge “the lowest levels of partisanship and political theater to hold a hearing to go after the likes of [Sesame Street characters] Elmo and Cookie Monster,” Lynch said. “I'm told we're here to talk about government efficiency, but … Miss Piggy hasn't been caught funneling billions of dollars in government contracts to herself,” Casar said, but SpaceX CEO “Elon Musk has.” Rep. Robert Garcia of California sarcastically asked PBS CEO Paula Kerger whether Elmo is “now, or has he ever been a member of the Communist Party?”
Just one House Republican, Public Broadcasting Caucus co-Chairman Mark Amodei of Nevada, signed a letter with Communications Subcommittee ranking member Doris Matsui of California and 17 other Democrats pushing back against FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's opposition to federal CPB funding. They also urged the FCC to “not chill legitimate underwriting practices that are compliant with its underwriting rules” amid the Carr-initiated probe into public broadcasters’ underwriting activities (see 2501300065). The lawmakers said 13 PBS and NPR radio and television stations have received FCC Enforcement Bureau letters inquiring about their underwriting practices.