House Votes to Defund National Public Radio

The House of Representatives on Thursday voted 228-192 on a bill to defund National Public Radio, the vast public radio network whose leadership has been questioned after a series of executive decisions about programming, staffing and reporting bias.

According to a story at foxnews.com, seven Republicans broke with House leadership and voted against the package. One GOP member, Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, voted present.



Though Republicans have been targeting NPR for months, in earnest after the firing last October of Fox News contributor Juan Williams, the charge to stop taxpayer cash from reaching NPR coffers was recently refueled by James O'Keefe. O'Keefe, the investigative reporter whose hidden camera expose led to the defunding of ACORN, recently captured on tape an ex-NPR executive calling Tea Party members gun-toting, racist, religious fanatics and saying the network doesn't really need federal money.

Opponents of government spending for NPR said the O'Keefe video was the last straw.

"Of all the data that we've seen, we still have not absorbed the culture of NPR until we saw the video" of that meeting, said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

NPR currently receives millions in indirect and direct funding to supply programming to hundreds of radio stations. But if the bill debated Thursday were to become law, the federal government would be prohibited from direct federal funding of NPR -- valued at $5 million in fiscal year 2010 -- and stations would be prohibited from using federal funds to pay NPR dues.

The legislation also bans public radio stations from using federal funds distributed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to purchase programming produced by NPR. Programming fees are the largest single source of NPR revenue, at $56 million in 2010's budget.

Current federal law requires approximately 26 percent of federal grants to public radio stations be used for the production or acquisition of programming. Stations can continue to receive federal grants for the production of their own programming, according to the bill.

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