Bipartisanship Reins As NPR Defund Measure Fails

In the first of many acts of bipartisanship to come in the 112^th Congress, House Democrats have refused to work with Republicans on cutting NPR’s public funding.

The brouhaha was created when NPR fired Juan Williams for expressing his honest opinion on Fox News. After an obviously political move by a “public” radio station that receives taxpayer dollars, the GOP moved to end the public portion of the subsidy.

The cut was selected by American’s voting online in the House GOP’s You Cut program. But just as they did in the healthcare, cap and trade, and stimulus bills, the Democrats failed to yield to the will of the American people.

The amount of money NPR receives from taxpayers is disputed but may be as much as 25%.

The station originally criticized the possible cut by saying, “The proposal to prohibit public radio stations from using CPB grants to purchase NPR programming is an unwarranted attempt to interject federal authority into local station program decision-making.”

This seems odd, due to their own estimate that only one percent of its funding comes from Corporation for Public Broadcasting. How would a cut so small be so “unwarranted”?

The vote in the House was 239-171 against defunding. To which NPR proclaimed that, “good judgment prevailed as Congress rejected a move to assert government control over the content of news.”

What NPR and House Democrats fail to realize, is when even a penny of taxpayer money is injected into any venture it is the taxpayer who should have the ability to dictate the terms. Through the You Cut site, a large number of Americans objected to the, dare I say, “unwarranted injection” of NPR’s political bias into their programming.

Thus, the American people should let NPR function like any other radio station in America, on its merits. If NPR is to many like it is to me a boring, liberal droolfest, then it will fail. The government doesn’t need to act as a fall back for any more organizations that should live or die in the marketplace.