The Senate approves Trump administration for public broadcasting and foreign aid: NPR

The Senate approved the cancellation package of $ 9 billion from the Trump administration aimed at recovering the money already allocated on radio and public television – a major step towards the liquidation of nearly six decades of federal financing for the public distribution company.

CPB is expected to lose $ 1.1 billion intended to finance it over the next two years, while the bill also reduces $ 7.9 billion in other programs. CPB acts as a conduit for federal money at NPR, PBS and their member stations.

In a “voting-a-rama” marathon session which lasted the short hours on Thursday, the senators introduce many amendments, before voting in the end of 51 to 48 to approve the package which includes cuts in foreign food and health programs. A senator, Tina Smith of Minnesota, was not present in the vote due to hospitalization.

The approval of the Senate goes back to a final confrontation to the Chamber, which approved a previous version last month.

The Senate’s vote was largely in the party parties, the Democrats voting against the bill and almost two The Republicans vote for this. Gop’s exceptions were Susan Collins from Maine and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska. Kentucky republican senator, Mitch McConnell, who voted on Tuesday not to debate the bill, which prompted Vice-President JD Vance to vote, nevertheless approved the final measure.

In a statement immediately after the vote, the CEO of NPR, Katherine Maher, said: “Almost 3 years out of 4, the Americans say that they are counting on their public radio stations for alerts and news for their public security”, adding: “We call on the House of Representatives to reject this elimination of public media financing, which directly harms their communities and their voters, and could very well be at risk.”

In a separate declaration, Kate Riley, president and chief executive officer of public television stations in America, said that the organization was “devastated that the Senate voted to eliminate federal funding from local public television stations in all this country which provides free public security, educational services and community communities to their communities.”

During the vote, numerous requests from the Democrats to carve out funding for NPR, PBS and their member stations of the package were largely symbolic, because the Republicans had the figures despite the defections.

In one of the late modifications offered, Murkowski sought to restore funding for the CPB while prohibiting federal money from going to NPR. She mentioned a 7.3 earthquake who struck the Alaska peninsula on Wednesday and Kodiak Island and an alert she had received from the public radio station Kacb in Unalaska, in the Aleutian islands.

“I watch a text that I received from the director of the station there,” she said, telling how the three staff of the station are broadcasting emergency messages despite a Tsunami warning which was then lifted. The text said the local community had been responsible for listening to the local public radio station.

“I have an amendment that protects public media, their independence, their ability to provide local news, weather reports and, yes, emergency alerts,” said Murkowski. “We are told today that this kind of thing counts, so I hope that my colleagues would recognize what is at stake and vote for my amendment.”

But a majority voted against this.

Wisconsin Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin said that if the public broadcasting cuts, “local television and radio stations will close – and they will be rural stations that will be the first to close”.

“These questions have not even been raised as part of our credits process in the past two years,” said Baldwin. “So, to take this extraordinary step and say that these problems are now so serious and urgent that we have to solve them like that – what do we do here?”

The Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, speaking against the motion, said that public broadcasting “has long been overwhelmed by partisan activists. Plain and simple”.

“NPR and PBS have repeatedly revealed their left bias,” he said. “If you want to look at the left propaganda, activate MSNBC. But taxpayers should not be obliged to subsidize it.”

The head of the majority of the Senate, John Thune, R-SD, noted that the United States was 36 billions of indebted dollars. “What we are talking about here is 1/10 of 1% of all federal expenses,” he said. “But it’s a step in the right direction.”

The White House sent the request to the Congress in early June – the first termination of this type in more than a quarter of a century. The Chamber quickly adopted it and the Chamber should approve the changes made by the Senate before the midnight Friday deadline. The deadline marks 45 days since President Trump sent the Congress termination request, when the legislators are held by law to assert the cuts or do nothing and allow money to restore.

Trump and GOP legislators have intensified attacks on public dissemination since the elections, the president writing On his social media platform this week, “(a) NY Republican who votes to allow this monstrosity to continue to disseminate does not have my support or approval”.

In April, the CEO of NPR, Katherine Maher, and the CEO and president of PBS, Paula Kerger, testified on Capitol Hill before the subcommittee of the Chamber on the effectiveness of the government chaired by the Republican representative of Georgia Marjorie Taylor Greene. The leaders defended the public media against the accusations of political bias, but Greene concluded the audience by saying: “We think you can all hate your own penny.”

NPR, which produces information programs Morning edition And Well considered, Obtains approximately 1% of its funding directly from the federal government. Its member stations, which operate more than 1,300 points of sale, receive around 8% to 10% of their funding from the federal government. With its night HOUR NEW PBS and high -quality children’s programming, as Daniel Tiger districtPBS and its stations get approximately 15% of their income. The funds for the two networks come from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

The leaders of the public broadcasting community warned that the loss of funding of the CPB would paralyze small stations, in particular in rural areas ill -served by the commercial media and would weaken the entire public media network.

A Harris survey conducted last week in the name of the NPR revealed that two global thirds (66%) of Americans support federal funding for public radio, the same proportion suitable that such funding is a good value for taxpayers. More than half of the Republicans (58%) and more than three quarters of the Democrats (77%) declared the support for the financing of public radio. The online survey served 2,089 American adults, with an error margin of +/- 2.5%.

The version of the Chamber includes the elimination of $ 7.9 billion in foreign aid funding, notably for Pepfar, the US Aids Relief initiative initiated under President George W. Bush. But Collins, president of the credit committee, and other Republicans stressed that the reduction of vital foreign aid programs like the PEPFAR has gone too far. They decided to exclude the program from the final version of the Senate.

Murkowski was part of a handful of republicans in rural states that have expressed themselves to the loss of funding for public radio stations which are addressed to the under-service populations. Among them, the republican senator from southern Dakota Mike turns on Tuesday announcement That he had concluded an agreement for the White House to divert from New Deal money to finance 28 stations in the service of Amerindian auditors in nine states.

But in a letter to Rounds, the president and chief executive officer of native public radio Loris Taylor qualified the compromise as “structurally impractical”, adding that if the network appreciates efforts to maintain the tribal media “, the Green New Deal is mainly a framework for climatic and economic services, not a dedicated source of funding for infrastructure or dedicated media services.”

Disclosure: This story was written and reported by the NPR Scott Neuman correspondent and the Congress of the Walsh Congress. He was published by the editor -in -chief Gerry Holmes. As part of the NPR protocol to account for himself, no manager of the company or the director of the news examined this story before its publication publicly.