People are involved in a rally to call Congress to protect funding for US public broadcasting, public broadcasting (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), except for NPR’s central offices in Washington, DC on March 26th.
AFP via Getty Images
The House voted on Wednesday to examine a bill to cancel $ 9.4 billion in funding for National Public Radio (NPR), Public Broadcasting (PBS) and the United States International Development Service (USAID). The bill does not focus on whether it will approve new dollars, but it is on the contrary a clawback of the previously approved money, a move known as a withdrawal.
THE Voting was 213-207Along the party lines with all the votes yes by the Republicans and all except one of the Democratic votes (Thomas Massie of Kentak was the only democratic vote no). Twelve representatives did not vote.
Principle and procedures
Removal accounts allow Congress to reverse part of the federal budget that has already passed. The Authority for the hearing is in the 1974 retention law (ICA), which was voted on in response to President Nixon’s contendti0n that it could authorize or withhold the funds as it wanted. Congress then amended the law on the controversy, creating two categories of power within the ICA: Deferrals (temporary delays in spending) and cancellations (cost cancellations). ICA also introduced the process and procedures for both.
While either Congress members or the President can officially propose abolition, traditionally, these accounts start at the White House. When the president sends a proposal to abolish Congress, the clock begins to run and Congress has 45 legislative days to act. While Congress considers the bill, expenses can be temporarily stopped.
To move forward, a bill on abolition requires a simple majority vote in both the House and the Senate. If the account is voted on or if the Congress does not act within 45 days, the abolition fails and the funds are again available for use.
The current proposal
The White House proposed total cuts of $ 9.4 billion. This translates into a reduction of $ 8.3 billion by USAID and $ 1.07 billion by the CPB, which funds NPR and PBS. These funds were previously approved by September 2027.
The clock began to fit June 3, that is, when the White House officially transmits the cancellation package. On May 1, the president marked that he would seek to reduce funding for NPR and PBS when he signed an executive mandate by reducing federal funding and directing CPB to “stop direct funding in NPR and PBS”, which he said was consistent with his administration ” funding does not support the biased and the placement of news. ” In addition, the President called on the CPB Council to reduce to provide future funding and to “stop indirect funding to NPR and PBS, including ensuring that licensors and public public radio and television stations,
PBS is not mainly funded through federal tax dollars – only 15% of its budget comes from the federal government. It is largely supported by viewers like you. Almost 60% of public television funding comes from private donors or grants. The fees paid by the members’ stations provide additional funding.
NPR gets about 1 % of its budget from Congress.
The cuts in the USAID were already dramatic under the stint of Elon Musk as head of the newly established Doge Department. One of Doge’s first moves was to close USAID offices and reduce costs, pins that ruled unconstitutionally in March this year. Doge had sought to reduce billions more than the organization and some were seeing the bill to abolish (which attacks only a fraction of cuts) as tiptoeing to more retrospective cuts. USAID was previously and independent federal service, but in an attempt to disassemble it, the administration has moved under the Foreign Ministry.
What’s coming next
The house plans to vote for the final bill today.
The bill will also be considered in the Senate, where it is expected to pass, again along the parties. This is true despite the fact that Republicans have a thin majority of 53 votes. Only two Republican senators, however, publicly opposed the cuts: Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
Collins specifically opposes cuts to funding healthcare programs in the context of Pepfar, of the United States President of AIDS’s emergency program to relieve AIDS, proposed by President George Bush in 2003.
Murkowski does not want to pull support from CPB. According to PBS, 58% of all US television households (over 130 million people) are coordinated on PBS members and a heavy 60% of the audience still lives in rural communities. In agricultural, native American and island communities, public broadcasting stations are often the only local and operating mass media and how many Americans get their news (you can remember that when I traveled to Alaska to prepare taxes, taxes).
History
Most attempts to abolish the Senate, mainly due to concerns to overthrow the work of previous administrations. Today’s Congress does not seem to have the same reservations.
The greatest abolition of modern history occurred in 1981, when President Ronald Reagan proposed $ 15 billion in cuts – Synagogue approved some of these cuts. Nearly four decades later, President Trump proposed the same amount of cuts in his first term. The body passed the bill, but the Senate did not vote, causing its failure.
