[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 23 (Monday, February 14, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H758-H760]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      AMERICAN PUBLIC BROADCASTING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) is 
recognized for 30 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, this is going to be one of the most 
pivotal weeks in the history of American public broadcasting. As early 
as tomorrow, we will be voting on a continuing resolution that would 
call for the elimination of all Federal government support for public 
broadcasting.
  Now, I will admit, this is very personal to me. If this reckless act 
were to be taken, it would mean that my local award-winning public 
broadcasting station, Oregon Public Broadcasting, would lose $2.4 
million annually, funds that we use to invest serving Oregon and 
southwest Washington and a little bit of Idaho with programs that keep 
people informed, inspired, that help educate our youngest citizens. 
Actually, through the magic of Internet, people enjoy programming 
online across America because of the quality of Oregon Public 
Broadcasting.
  Now, there's no question, as some of my colleagues were just 
discussing on the floor, that there is hard budget work ahead of us. I 
look forward to opportunities to eliminate unnecessary agricultural 
supports and rebalance those efforts. I look forward to dealing with 
helping rein in spiraling Medicare costs. Not eliminating health care 
reform, but accelerating opportunities to reform it and make it more 
efficient.
  I look forward to looking at the largest area of expenditure dealing 
with the Defense Department and discretionary funding. Without 
question, there are a number of areas there, the American people know 
and understand, that can be adjusted.
  However, we must do this in a way that is thoughtful and does not 
disproportionately impact our rural communities, our children, and 
universal access to high-quality TV and radio programming.

                              {time}  2100

  Funding for public broadcasting gives our communities a voice by 
covering local news and events in a way that weekly papers cannot and 
commercial radio and TV stations do not provide. Today's media is 
rarely locally owned. Huge corporations send managers to deal with 
papers and radio programs. Public broadcasting is the only locally 
owned and managed media in America.
  I am joined this evening by a couple of my colleagues, and I look 
forward to engaging in this conversation with them. I note I could 
start with my colleague from Kentucky, Congressman Chandler, a champion 
of public broadcasting, as well as a very fiscally conservative Member 
of Congress. Welcome this evening. I look forward to your thoughts and 
observations.
  Mr. CHANDLER. Well, it is good to be here with you tonight. It is a 
tremendous opportunity to talk about something that is also very 
important to me. But I want to just start out by saying to my colleague 
from Oregon, Mr. Blumenauer, how appreciative I am and I think how 
appreciative so many people are across this country of your championing 
of public broadcasting over the years. You have been an incredible 
champion of that effort, and I just think it is marvelous because of 
what public broadcasting means to all of us.
  As you mentioned earlier, we heard some of our Republican colleagues 
talking earlier about some of the budget efforts that were going to be 
made, and I must say we do need to have that discussion here in 
Washington. There is no question about it. It is a discussion that our 
President is now engaging in and the Congress is going to be engaging 
in in the next little bit about what programs we can cut, and there is 
no question that there are some that need to be cut.
  We certainly need to get our fiscal house in order in this country. 
But zeroing out funding for one of the most successful public-private 
partnerships responsible for 21,000 good American jobs isn't the thing 
to do. In these tough economic times, more than ever, we need to 
support American jobs and invest in our people, and cutting funding for 
public broadcasting does neither.
  Until now, public broadcasting has enjoyed strong bipartisan support. 
In fact, in my home State of Kentucky--and, by the way, I heard the 
gentleman from Oregon talk very much about the success that his public 
broadcasting system has had. I must say, ours in Kentucky has done 
rather well also, and it is something we are very, very proud of.
  But in my home State of Kentucky, a Republican Governor actually 
provided Kentucky Educational Television, or KET, with its first 
operating budget in 1968, helping KET hit the airwaves, and it is now 
being very ably run by the daughter of one of my Republican 
predecessors in this office, Shae Hopkins. This station has touched 
countless people throughout the years, and today it is used by more 
than 1 million Kentuckians each week, in a State of only around 4 
million. So that is a pretty significant number. You can see how 
important it is to our State.
  But completely cutting all Corporation for Public Broadcasting 
funding will make KET cut at least 31 full-time jobs and 20 part-time 
jobs. These cuts would be on top of the 24 percent workforce reduction 
that KET has already endured in the past 3 years. KET has said that 
this loss of staff could hinder their ability dramatically to serve our 
Commonwealth.
  And our public radio, just like public radio all across the country, 
will certainly be affected. How many people across our great Nation 
wake up to NPR and ``Morning Edition'' and drive home to ``All Things 
Considered''? It is a very, very important part of life, I know.
  In my home State, we have stations like WEKU in Richmond, Kentucky, 
and WUKY in Lexington that touch all parts of Kentucky, including very 
rural parts of our Commonwealth. WEKU radio out of Richmond has been 
serving Kentucky since the 1930s, and they have already gone down 30 
percent recently. And this, of course, again would force more layoffs.
  Public broadcasting is uniquely American and should stay that way for 
future generations. My three children grew up watching Sesame Street 
just like I did when I was a kid, and countless others receive basic 
skills and workplace education, and some even receive help with college 
credit courses through KET. WEKU and WUKY provide local programming and 
local news that can't be found elsewhere.
  So, please, please join me today in support of public broadcasting. 
These stations are too important, and we just simply cannot let them go 
away.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you. I appreciate your eloquence, Congressman 
Chandler, your long-standing support for public broadcasting, helping 
us have a constructive dialogue here in Congress to make it better.
  Mr. CHANDLER. Well, another thing that it does, of course, if I may, 
it increases the civility of our discourse. In a time when so many 
stations are sensationalizing the news, there is one place that we can 
be sure that we can get a civil dialogue and both sides of the story, 
and that is public broadcasting.

  So thank you so much for all you do.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Before I turn to my good friend from California, 
Congressman Farr, I just want to follow up on one point that you made, 
because this is vital infrastructure that connects Americans, 
particularly in rural and small town America, people who otherwise 
would not have access.
  There is always going to be public broadcasting in New York, 
Washington, D.C., or San Francisco. But it is rural and small town 
America that is going to pay the price if we lose the support for this 
infrastructure. Again, being very parochial, but it is not uncommon for 
what happens in the Midwest, in Kansas, in Texas. In rural Oregon, it 
costs 11 times as much to extend the signal to remote Burns, Oregon, in 
eastern Oregon, than to deal in the metropolitan area. So these 1,300

[[Page H759]]

independently owned and operated public broadcasting stations are going 
to be severely crippled in terms of their ability to meet the needs of 
rural and small town America.
  I am going to speak in a few moments about some of the unique 
programming, but the point is that the signal itself depends on the 
type of subsidy we are talking about here.
  Now, if I may turn to my colleague who has been a supporter of public 
broadcasting back in the day when he was a local official in dealing in 
the California Legislature, Congressman Sam Farr.
  Mr. FARR. Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me. This is a 
very important discussion. I wish we could do it really in an open 
debate where we could have a debate on this, because I don't think that 
there is a person in this country that doesn't realize how necessary it 
is to keep our electorate well informed.
  So I join the chorus of well-informed listeners tonight to support 
America's Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I find it ironic that 
the news got released today, the day when you think of a national day 
of communication, a day when we tell our loved ones how much we 
appreciate them through words and symbols. And here we are attacking 
the very essence of America's foundation for information that is not 
commercial information, that is not paid for to get it and have to have 
ratings in order to get people to purchase the commercials.
  It is a sad day that Valentine's Day is used to destroy something we 
love so much. It is mean news to hear some of my Republican colleagues 
who want to cut almost half a billion dollars out of the Corporation 
for Public Broadcasting at a time when the world has been dedicated to 
watching what is going on in the Middle East, in Egypt, which is 
essentially the essence of communication, the essence of technology, 
but also the freedom of technology.
  In America, we don't own stations, like BBC and Canadian Broadcasting 
where the government owns the stations. We allow nonprofit entities to 
do the broadcasting, both on radio and television, as you indicated, 
Mr. Chandler. And I don't think you can raise children in this country 
without appreciating the value of what is learned, the lessons learned 
by programs such as Sesame Street and others.

                              {time}  2110

  But to think that you can just cut this out as a value to a greater 
debate of balancing the Federal Government by eliminating this, is 
nuts. This is what I always call the persons who know the price of 
everything but the absolute value of nothing. Because cutting this, you 
can come up with a pricetag, but the value you lose to the American 
public.
  I wake up, here we are in Congress, and obviously we need all the 
news we can get. I don't know a Member of Congress who doesn't wake up 
listening to NPR radio, of all the choices we have, on both sides of 
the aisle, to get unbiased news in the morning before we come to work. 
And I know it because when you're on it, people comment the minute you 
get here. They hear you on NPR, everybody says, I heard you this 
morning when I was getting ready to come to work. This is not just done 
by Members of Congress. It's done by everybody in the United States.
  And what Congressman Blumenauer talked about is the rural parts of 
America would never have this program; never have access to this 
information. If you want to destroy rural America, then destroy their 
access to information. Because then the only thing the young population 
will do is have to move out in order to keep up. So we have to make 
sure that these nonsensical cuts, which have dramatic and negative 
impacts, are not made to this budget. Let's sustain the budget to keep 
Americans well-informed and ensure future generations of the richness 
of public broadcasting. Let's give back our hearts and minds to the 
American public by maintaining PBS.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you for your eloquent statement, your support. 
And your being with us here this evening is very important. I think 
your point about how we start the day--how many of us were relying on 
public broadcasting for up-to-the-minute results of what was going on 
in Egypt at a time when the large corporate news organizations are 
cutting back their foreign coverage. Because of the dedication of 
hundreds of thousands of sponsors, volunteer contributors, public 
broadcasting has expanded its international coverage extraordinarily 
so.
  But before I turn to my good friend from New York, I would just make 
one reference, however. Although the international is certainly 
critical, and it's very important for us here in Congress, one of the 
things that I think is so essential to zero in on is the local 
programing for rural and small-town America. Lakeland Public 
Broadcasting in Bemidji, Minnesota, the only broadcaster--the only 
broadcaster--for much of their service territory. In Colorado, KBNF is 
increasingly the point source of news and public affairs programing, 
emergency preparedness alert, as the print media continues to shrink 
and corporations kind of move in and automate small radio markets.
  I could go on through the list. I won't because I do want to provide 
time. But there is special coverage in the upper Midwest, in the 
Northwest, in the Mountain States that is tailored to hard-to-serve 
areas that no commercial station is willing to invest in this type of 
quality. And to turn our backs on it is one of the most reckless things 
that can be done. And, frankly, it's a terrible optic for my Republican 
friends in their first weeks in power, to turn their backs on 170 
million Americans who enjoy and rely on it every month. In fact, if you 
look at the survey research about what people want to protect, they 
want to protect our strength in defense. Number two is public 
broadcasting. Yet this is on the chopping block.
  With that, may I turn to my good friend from Upstate New York (Mr. 
Owens).
  Mr. OWENS. Thank you very much. I appreciate your leadership on this.
  When you talk about rural, I represent rural. Fourteen thousand 
square miles make up my district, a thousand miles around the 
perimeter. I live in a very rural place, and public broadcasting is 
extraordinarily important to each and every one of my constituents.
  I have to do a bit of a disclaimer first. My wife works for our local 
television station. She's the education director. I volunteered at the 
station for 3\1/2\ years, and I was the host of a television program. 
And I was also the lawyer for that station for about 25 years. So this 
is a real family affair for me.
  I'm most disturbed because I see what's going on in this situation is 
really a slash-and-burn tactic that is primarily focused on public 
broadcasting. It is an attempt to take the continuing resolution and 
make it into a piece of ideology. That's not what our constituents are 
asking of us. They want us to make an economic decision and do an 
economic analysis of where we are and where we're going.
  I think it's extraordinarily important that we focus on the economics 
of the debt and the deficit and not on ideology; we have an opportunity 
to act rationally and in a bipartisan fashion, as we did in the last 
lame duck session of Congress. Our friends and neighbors at home demand 
no less. I can agree to cut $100 billion dollars, which is actually 
about 3 percent of this year's budget, if we do it by sharing the pain.

  Let me tell you a little bit about public broadcasting. My children 
grew up with it. It is part of the education that my family 
experienced. My grandchildren are growing up with it. This is the best 
in family values and quality programing that you're going to see. If 
our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are concerned about the 
development of morals, integrity, and education, then public 
broadcasting is a place they should support, not kill.
  Just a few thoughts. My public television station provides essential 
services to that upstate rural community I talked about. It's aligned 
with their mission to inform, educate, involve, and entertain. Public 
broadcasting is America's largest classroom, closing the achievement 
gap through innovative standards-based educational content and 
resources for parent, teachers, and students. Public broadcasting 
serves as a trusted partner and agent of better citizenship in the 
world's greatest democracy.
  Public broadcasting is not a luxury we can't afford but an essential 
service regularly depended on and enjoyed by 170 million Americans in 
all 50 States.

[[Page H760]]

Let me repeat that; 170 million Americans support public broadcasting. 
Cutting or eliminating Federal funding for public broadcasting will 
have a severe negative impact on local services and economies in all 50 
States.
  Let me point out that public broadcasting directly supports 21,000 
jobs, and almost all of them are in local public radio stations in 
hundreds of communities in America. Science-focused programing at all 
age levels, from Sid the Science Kid to NOVA, supports the acquisition 
of 21st century problem-solving science skills.
  I could go on. It's clear that public broadcasting brings a dimension 
to education that we see in no other modality available to us. I agree 
that reducing spending is a priority, but it must be achieved without 
resorting to ideological slash-and-burn tactics that will not allow us 
to facilitate a compromise with the Senate and White House, which 
brings real reduction in spending based upon the shared pain, which we 
all understand is needed. Thank you very much.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you. As only a dedicated volunteer of public 
broadcasting could come forward with that eloquence and the personal 
story, I deeply appreciate it.
  A couple of facts I think that ought to be on the table. We are 
talking about less than a half-cent per day per American. We are 
dealing with organizations that have amazing volunteer support in each 
and every one of our communities. And they take that half cent a day 
and they leverage it. Each dollar of Federal funding can leverage $5, 
$6, $7 of local programming and benefit.

                              {time}  2120

  You said something, Congressman Owens, that I thought was very 
important when you talked about the programming. In fact, each of you 
mentioned it. This is the only medium that is geared as programming for 
our children in order to educate and enrich them, not to sell them 
something. It's the only area that they have access to.
  Mr. FARR. If the gentleman will yield, I think what is also very 
important is this is one government program where there is no free 
lunch. It requires a local match. It requires a contribution by the 
community, by volunteers. It's not a paid-for program without raising 
the money in the local media, as you know in your own station and had 
to do every year in the volunteer drive. When you think about it, you 
don't go out and match public volunteerism to buy military equipment. 
You don't match with public volunteerism practically any other thing in 
American society. This is one budget that really depends on the 
popularity of the programming in order to get volunteer support, 
volunteer contributions, and volunteer help in the studios.
  Why would you cut out something that the private sector and personal 
commitment think is so important?
  Mr. CHANDLER. Boy, does our community volunteer. In all of our 
communities, I know we see an enormous number of volunteers.
  I appreciate what you just said, Mr. Farr from California and Mr. 
Owens from New York. Thank you all for your strong support over the 
years with this and for pointing out the importance of education. I 
mean, as we all have said, this is the only public entity that educates 
us on television and radio on a regular basis, and that is an 
incredibly important thing.
  The other thing that is so important about it is it truly broadens 
our horizons. It doesn't narrow us like so much of what we see on the 
television. It, rather, broadens our way of thinking. In what other 
place can you get that on a regular basis in our culture? This is a 
special American institution.
  Mr. FARR. I would even say it defines our civilization. When you 
think of programs like StoryCorps, collecting that information for the 
records and keeping that part of our oral history of America, it is 
absolutely essential that our culture and our times and that our moment 
in history and in the world be maintained in the public sector where 
there isn't private ownership of it.
  Mr. CHANDLER. It has always had such bipartisan support.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Yes. This is the first time there has been a 
bipartisan effort, apparently. We've had efforts before. When our 
Republican friends took over, there were assaults on public 
broadcasting, but there was ultimately strong bipartisan support that 
beat it back. At home, these 170 million Americans, they aren't just 
Democrats or Republicans or Independents. It is a broad spectrum of 
Americans which relies on information that isn't pre-filtered for them. 
There are opposing views. We've all heard things on public broadcasting 
that we don't know we agree with or we've heard things that we never 
would have listened to in other venues.
  I don't want us to close without turning back to our counsel and our 
volunteer and our spouse of a public broadcasting member.
  Mr. OWENS. In my conversations that I've had the opportunity to have 
over the last couple of days, clearly, public broadcasting understands 
that they are going to have to share the pain with everyone else. It's 
one thing to cut somebody's budget by 3 or 4 percent. It's another 
thing to eliminate somebody's budget. No one survives when somebody's 
budget is eliminated. People survive and prosper when they have to make 
up 3 or 4 percent. That's what I'm urging our colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle to really think about it.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you. I appreciate that.
  Any other final words?
  Mr. FARR. Thank you for your leadership. It is absolutely essential 
to America's well-being.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. We look forward to continuing this conversation on 
the floor of the House.
  There has been an exciting outpouring of support around the country 
as people have been invited to look at the facts and to share their 
opinions. I know that this is making a difference because every Member 
of Congress is hearing from the men and women they represent about the 
value of public broadcasting, and if what they are hearing is anything 
like what is coming into my office, it is overwhelmingly in the support 
of this vital program and in urging us to do the right thing.
  I deeply appreciate my colleagues for joining me this evening. I look 
forward to continuing to spotlight this and to working to make sure 
that, rather than eliminate public broadcasting, we work to strengthen 
it so that everyone in America can benefit.
  Thank you very much.
  Ms. ESHOO. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this evening to protest 
the elimination of funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting 
(CPB).
  The Republicans are proposing to eliminate CPB's federal funding 
going forward. Without these funds, local stations would have to reduce 
or eliminate such valuable public programming as Sesame Street, the 
NewsHour and NOVA.
  Every month, more than 170 million Americans experience the benefits 
of public broadcasting through 368 public television stations and 934 
public radio stations, several of which are located in the Bay Area.
  One example is San Francisco's KQED, which attracts more than 841,000 
television viewers each week. Employing 275 full-time staff members and 
providing locally produced news programming, KQED has an important 
economic and cultural impact on the Bay Area community.
  From theater and ballet to music, thoughtful public discourse, 
science an children's programming, the programming found on public 
broadcasting has set a world standard.
  Public broadcasting is the best definition of educational 
television--it enriches our sense of the world and educates us.
  Over the years, the commercial market strikes another image--reality 
TV; talking heads shouting past each other; and inane programming. If 
this is what some viewers want--fine--shouldn't we retain both?
  We've done much work together to promote and preserve CPB against 
those who want to cut it out of the modern world of broadcast 
technology These are tough economic times, but what feeds the soul and 
informs our national intellect should be considered an important 
national resource.
  I urge my colleagues to come together on both sides of the aisle and 
restore funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________