Editors at National Review Online call on the Republican-led Congress to take a simple cost-cutting action.
This week, the Senate will vote to rescind $9.4 billion of spending Congress previously appropriated. The so-called rescissions bill, requested by the Trump administration in June, would ax funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and various foreign-aid accounts. The House has already passed the bill, and since rescissions are immune to filibusters, a simple majority of the Senate can pass the cuts into law. If Republicans are remotely sincere about limiting the federal government’s scope, they should pass the bill without delay.
Admittedly, the fiscal impact of this bill would be tiny. The federal budget includes $7 trillion in annual outlays. These rescissions amount to less than 1 percent of nondefense discretionary spending. But they are worth passing regardless. Congress may be unwilling to reform unsustainable entitlement programs — the principal driver of our fiscal crisis — but it should take every opportunity to cut unwarranted spending wherever it exists.
President Trump has chosen the targets of his rescissions well. His request would completely defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which provides half a billion dollars each year to support public radio and television stations. Its two major beneficiaries are PBS and NPR, outlets whose progressive bias is pervasive and well documented. But even if they were straight-down-the-middle, news and entertainment programming should not be financed by the government.
Our country is home to more than 15,000 commercial radio stations and 4,000 television stations, in addition to a sprawling ecosystem of print, cable, and online media. Viewers and listeners of PBS and NPR are significantly more affluent than the average American, which gives them the means to support public broadcasting through voluntary contributions. Surely they could fill the gap of the 15 percent of funding that currently comes from the federal government (and get some tote bags in the bargain).
The post Urging Congress to pass the rescissions bill first appeared on John Locke Foundation.
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Author: Mitch Kokai
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