The U.S. House narrowly voted on Thursday, June 12, to cancel about $9.4 billion in funding previously approved by Congress to fund PBS, NPR and reduce foreign aid assistance. The recissions package now moves to the Senate.
Earlier this month, the President formally requested that Congress rescind more than a billion dollars of approved federal funding for public broadcasters.
The Trump administration argues PBS and NPR are politically biased.
On June 9, PBS CEO and President Paula Kerger was in Seattle for national PBS board meetings. We spoke with her while she was in town.
Kerger says PBS is not like network television. Each PBS station is locally owned and governed, and stations are members of PBS.
Congress funds public media through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the vast majority of those funds go directly to local stations.
Kerger says that federal funding represents about 15% of the cost of some stations’ budgets.
“Here in Seattle, it’s probably a little less than that, but for some of our small stations in rural parts of the country, it can be as much as 40% of their budget. And that is why this whole debate about the future of public broadcasting really matters. It’s not as much about what happens to PBS. It’s about what happens to your local stations in communities around the country,” Kerger said.
The rescissions package will need to pass with a majority vote in the Senate for approval.
The Trump administration sent the recession request to Congress on June 3. That started a 45-day window in which Congress needs to take action on the request. If it’s not approved by July 18, the request expires.
