[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 22 (Friday, February 11, 2011)]
[House]
[Page H716]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO PUBLIC BROADCASTING?

  (Mr. BLUMENAUER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, this next week we are going to have a 
very interesting conversation here in Washington, D.C., where the zeal 
that some of our friends have for both an ideological agenda and an 
effort at trying to cut government spending wherever they can, will put 
public broadcasting in the crosshairs.
  I think it's an unfortunate development, one that's going to be a 
disappointment to the 170 million Americans who rely on public 
broadcasting every month. It's going to be particularly unfortunate if 
this agenda succeeds because it's not going to punish people in New 
York, or Portland, Oregon, or Seattle, or San Francisco. They will 
always have public broadcasting, although it will be diminished because 
of what some of my friends on the other side of the aisle hope to 
accomplish. But the real losers are going to be people in small-town 
and rural America. It costs 11 times as much to broadcast a signal to 
the far reaches of eastern Oregon than it does in the metropolitan 
Portland area. People should watch this discussion carefully. A lot 
depends on it.

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