House Rules Declines Floor Vote on Amendments to Remove Rescission of CPB Funding

House Rules voted 8-4, along party lines, against allowing floor consideration of the first amendment, led by Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., co-chairman of the Congressional Public Broadcasting Caucus. The panel didn't even consider the other Democratic proposal, from Rep. Julie Johnson of Texas, though she testified about it.

Goldman had also planned to testify before House Rules about his amendment but instead made his case during floor debate Wednesday on the HR-4 rule. The measure “isn't trimming around the edges,” he said. “This is all federal funding for [CPB], which is PBS, NPR, local public television and radio. This is not just an attack, though, on PBS and NPR, as so many of my Republican colleagues have said. They know full well that more than 70% of this cut will be felt by the local radio and television stations in their own communities and across the country.”

CPB-funded “infrastructure is essential for emergency alerts, geotargeted text messages and first responder communications,” Goldman said: “My colleagues know all of this,” and if they are concerned about defunding CPB, they have a chance to reverse course by voting against the floor consideration rule “and choose your constituents over [President] Donald Trump.”

House Rules Chair Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said on the floor that NPR and PBS have repeatedly violated the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act’s mandate that “all public broadcasting programs must demonstrate strict adherence to objectivity and balance.” The law “lacks an enforcement mechanism, so we'll go with our constitutional prerogatives here to enforce the law, and it starts with this rescission of” CPB’s funding, she said. NPR and PBS will “weaponize their content against congressional Republicans. They'll hire lobbyists, they'll buy ads. In fact, they have. They can continue to do that, but thankfully, it won't be subsidized by the taxpayer any longer.”

“Public media is the place for arts [and] nonprofitable things to happen,” Johnson said. “And the fact that we are taking this away from everyone is irresponsible.” When “you're in rural Texas, sometimes the NPR station or the local PBS station is the only radio station out there,” she said: Removing public broadcasters’ federal funding is “a travesty to the cultural progress that this country's made. It's a travesty to our history. It's a tragedy to the children of the future to not have access to PBS Kids and the wonderful characters that have been developed over the history” of shows like Sesame Street.

House Rules member Teresa Leger Fernandez, D-N.M., said during the meeting that she backed Johnson's amendment because “working families” can't afford a subscription to HBO or Netflix, which will be Sesame Street’s new streaming home later this year, but the show “is free right now on PBS. You can get it over your TV with an antenna that can cost you $5, and you never have to pay anything else.” Ending CPB funding is “basically” akin to cutting “education funding,” Leger Fernandez said. “This is costing American working families more money.” She later sought a committee vote on Goldman’s amendment, arguing that “I'm fighting for public media, not just for my district, but for the stations in my Republican colleagues’ districts, too.”

WOUB-FM Athens, Ohio, urged its supporters Wednesday to contact House lawmakers “immediately so that they can understand how their vote would affect their community and their constituents’ access to trusted, local news, educational programming, lifesaving emergency alerts, and noncommercial music that brings people together.”