[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 1818]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        THE ASSAULT ON THE VOICE OF AMERICA--PUBLIC BROADCASTING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Madam Speaker, the next few days on the floor of the 
House will be critical for the future of public broadcasting.
  With the new Republican majority, people here are hoping for saving 
less than one cent per day on this ideological assault--on what?--
public broadcasting, for 170 million Americans, their Voice of America 
and their window to the world.
  In an era when local papers and radio stations are being gobbled up 
by large conglomerates, public broadcasting's 1,300 stations around the 
country are increasingly the only source of locally owned, locally 
controlled content.
  Now, there is a lot of attention appropriately given to the major 
stations in America's large cities. We've all seen and heard 
programming from stations in Boston and San Francisco, New York, even 
in Portland, Oregon, as Oregon Public Broadcasting is recognized as one 
of these national leaders. For much of America outside the major 
metropolitan areas, public broadcasting actually plays an even more 
important role.
  In the Rockies, the Pacific Northwest, rural areas, and the upper 
Midwest, often public broadcasting is not just the best local source. 
It is the only source of information that relates directly to their 
communities. The big stations in the large communities are going to be 
harmed by this assault on public broadcasting.

                              {time}  1030

  My own public broadcasting in Oregon will lose $2.4 million. It will 
really harm the quality of their effort. But it is in rural and small 
town America that the greatest damage will be done. For example, in 
eastern Oregon, it costs 11 times as much to get a signal to Burns as 
it does in the more populist Willamette Valley, and there simply isn't 
the base of population to make up for the difference with local 
contributions.
  It's ironic that these partisans are attacking one of America's best 
public-private partnerships. It's not uncommon for the public 
investment to leverage $6 or more of private investment to make this 
high quality programming possible.
  Now, there are some who claim that in an era of 500 cable and 
satellite stations that we don't need another source of information. 
Well, those people fail to grasp the power of noncommercial, public 
broadcasting, how it is unique today. There are countless shows that 
are directed towards America's kids, but public broadcasting provides 
the only children's programming that is trying to educate and entertain 
our children, not sell them something.
  The public supports public broadcasting, not just in opinion polls, 
but with tens of millions of dollars of voluntary contributions that 
they make every year to provide the quality programming.
  I fear that this reckless partisan assault on public broadcasting is 
actually going to hurt our long-term efforts to tame the budget 
deficit. Trading a savings of less than one-half cent per day per 
American won't offset the damage to public confidence by eliminating 
what so many people believe in and count upon.
  More important, it will be a loss of a valuable tool to educate and 
inform the public from a respected nonpartisan source, exactly how 
we're going to need to get information to Americans to deal with this 
massive deficit problem that we face.
  For those of us working to meet America's challenges, public 
broadcasting is an essential ally; but I will say that with the 
tremendous outpouring of support that we are now seeing, people calling 
and writing Members of Congress, stopping them on the street, I think 
there is a good chance that those 1,300 public broadcasting stations 
will still be here in the future helping inform the debates of today, 
if all of us do our job, listen to the public, and do what is in the 
best long-term interests of this country.

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