One Corporate Earmark For John Boehner Could Fund Public Broadcasting For A Year

I hope you'll take one moment to actually contact 1st District Congressman Phil Roe and tell him NOT to vote for eliminating all the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Some facts -

This move is not geared for significant savings in Federal spending. The $445 million in funds for the CPB represents 0.0001% of the Federal budget.

The majority of those funds go to local radio stations which use them as they see fit - for creating jobs, creating local news stories and programs, and other local decisions. Some 9,000 local boards determine the activities of the stations in question. Loss of those funds will mean that rural areas will lose their one, and only, free outlet for literacy programs, child education programs, and arts programs.

Yes, there are many options available today which weren't available when the CPB was first formed, via cable, satellite and internet sources. But those must all be paid for by those who use them. All one needs to access CPB programs are a television or a radio.

The money spent for CPB is likely one of the most cost-effective programs in government - for every dollar a station receives, they are able to raise six more from donations at the local level for their operations.

The Republican plan to eliminate these funds is rooted in a weird notion that CPB is a heavily-biased program promoting ... well, the only argument I've found from the Republicans is that they think an NPR contributor named Juan Williams was inappropriately fired from NPR, so now they want to stomp on every CPB station in the nation with their Federal powers.

House Speaker John Boehner, meanwhile, has demanded every taxpayer in the country fund his one earmark for his home district in Ohio to benefit corporate military contractors at a cost of $456 million (more than the entire CPB budget). He thinks General Electric and the Rolls Royce company deserve tax subsidies while thousands of local jobs and local news outlets are gutted.

Taxing Tennessee has the details of Speaker Boehner's selfish desire to attract votes with corporate pork.



You can contact Rep. Phil Roe in several ways, but email is the quickest:
Email -
rep.roe@mail.house.gov

Morristown Office:
1609 College Park Drive, Suite 4
Morristown, TN 37813
423-254-1400
fax: 423-254-1403


You can also contact Congress via 170 Million Americans For Public Radio.