Terry Green Blogs About KUSP

Early this morning the U.S. House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution (H.R.1) that would set funding levels for the federal government from March 5 through the end of the federal fiscal year on September 30. The bill eliminates all funding for public radio, public television, and our stations’ online services.

The bill passed by a vote of 235-189. Every Republican in the House voting on the measure except for 3 voted for it; every Democrat voted against it.

Neither house of Congress is in session at all next week. The Senate, therefore, will take up the continuing resolution on February 28 with only five days to go before current authority to run the federal government runs out. This could have many repercussions; an NPR story on this topic is linked here.

The funding debate for public broadcasting (representing about twleve one-thousandths of one percent of federal spending) is not over. Signing up at “170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting” is one way to stay in touch with events as the story unfolds. And I’ll try to keep this blog updated as well…

Last night the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives unveiled their plans for Federal spending for the remainder of this fiscal year (which, in Washington, runs from October 1 through September 30).

H.R. 1 would eliminate all funding for public radio, television, and online services, including the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Most of CPB’s budget is passed through to local stations to provide local services. KUSP’s share of CPB support is just under $110,000 in the current fiscal year.

Many other non-defense, non-entitlement programs will be severely affected. Here is a link to a New York Times story on the overall impact.

KUSP is part of a national project organized by stations to help our listeners and viewers understand the issues and connect people who want to share their views to their Senators and Congressional Representatives. The project is called “170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting” and you can follow this link to get to the project’s web site.

Once you’re there you can plug in your address or zip code and it will bring up the phone numbers, e-mail links, and so on for your specific Representative in the House and your state’s Senators.

Current research shows that 170 million Americans use public media (radio, TV, and our web services) every month — more than half the country. You can see how researchers arrived at that figure here. Given the strong commitment the Republican Party’s leaders have made to eliminate public broadcasting’s Federal support, I think it is safe to say that Congress will have to hear from many of those 170 million Americans in the next few days if the present system of public radio and TV is to survive.

Edit (Thursday 2-17, 1 PM): Late last night an amendment was offered to H.R. 1 that would have restored federal funding of public broadcasting, but House procedures were employed to prevent the amendment from being voted on by the whole House. Consequently, when the House does vote on the final version of this continuing resolution bill, there will in all probability be no funding for public broadcasting in it. We’ll keep you posted as we learn more…