Hanging NPR in Effigy - I

Hypocrisy on Parade

“Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo.” –Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1914.

“Jobs, jobs, jobs!” the Republicans said in the last campaign. Increasing employment would be their mantra, their crusade, their sacred priority.

How’s that working out for them? Well, as soon as the new session started the House of Representatives dug up the dead horse they call “Obamacare” and beat on it for several days, finally passing a repeal that is just as dead as the horse in the Senate. They balked and bridled (sorry about these horse metaphors) at passing a continuing resolution for spending during the current fiscal year, which is already half over, demanding draconian cuts and only postponing the inevitable for two weeks, and then another three weeks – which will be up very soon. And last week, on St. Patrick’s Day, they took time to debate an “emergency” bill that never saw the inside of a committee room to cut funding for National Public Radio, and passed it, 228 to 192.

Jobs, it seems, are on the back burner while these more important matters are dealt with.

The NPR fiasco was billed as an emergency because it would save money. This was a brazen lie, but one that didn’t seem to embarrass anyone who presented it.

House Resolution 1076 would cut off federal funding for NPR, and would prohibit public radio stations across the country from using their federal funding to purchase NPR’s – or anyone else’s – programs. They would have to use the money they collect from listeners in those long, boring pledge drives to create their own programming in-house.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-TN, doled out the time for the Republicans. She started out by telling the truth: she said HR-1076 was “a bill to get the federal government and federal taxpayers out of the business of buying radio programs they do not agree with.” That was the real purpose of the legislation, not saving an insignificant amount of money.

Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-CO, was the original sponsor of the bill. He was less honest.

“According to NPR,” he said, “federal funding to supplement operations amounts to less than two percent of its annual budget. Some have said this Congress should not bother with such a small amount of money. Only in Washington would anyone say $64 million is not worth saving.”

Aha! Now we have a dollar amount. This is roughly equivalent to the cost of the 110 Tomahawk missiles that were fired at Libya on Saturday, or about twice the amount it cost us to buy the F-15 fighter jet that crashed there on Monday.

“You have to start somewhere,” Lamborn continued, “if you’re truly serious about getting our fiscal house in order.”

Yeah. Truly serious. We only need to find 218,749 cuts of equal size to zero out our $14 trillion national debt.

The House majority leader, Rep. Eric Cantor, R-VA, weighed in next.

“…we’ve seen NPR and its programming often veer far from what most Americans would like to see as far as expenditure of their taxpayer dollars,” he said. Later he asked, “Why should we use taxpayer dollars to be used to advocate one ideology?”

Cantor, too, was being truthful. It’s the content, not the cost, that riles him and his colleagues.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-NY, tried to shame the Republicans with satire for bringing up such a trivial “emergency.”

“Crisis averted, ladies and gentlemen!” he began. “What a relief! What a relief! I’m glad we got the economy back going. I’m glad we’ve secured our nuclear power plants. I’m so glad the Americans are back to work. We’ve finally found out our problem! We discovered a target we can all agree upon! It’s these guys! This is the problem! It’s Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers!”

He held up a poster of the silly but popular brothers on NPR who give callers advice on problems they’re having with their cars. Weiner’s humor provided a short but welcome break in the dismal doings.

Rep. Blackburn brought out some statistics. She said about 65% of NPR listeners have bachelor’s degrees, compared to only a quarter of the population as a whole. She said NPR listeners have a median household income of about $86,000 annually, compared to a national figure of about $55,000, and could easily afford to cover the cost of buying NPR programming. Then she propounded the underlying fallacy:

“This debate is about saving – taxpayer – money!” she prevaricated strenuously. Then she assured us that “the American taxpayer has said, ‘get NPR out of our pockets!’”

I am always reluctant to accept the claim of a party that was elected by a majority of a minority (the 2010 election brought out less than 41% of eligible voters) that it speaks for “the American taxpayer” or “the American people.”

I have primarily been quoting Republicans, because their statements were so outrageous, but congressional debates are like tennis matches, with each side getting a shot in turn, and a succession of Democrats interspersed the GOP remarks to point out the high quality of NPR programming, its growing listenership (if that’s really a word), and the fact that the bill would not reduce the amount of money going to local stations; it would just restrict the use of that money. There would be no significant savings gained by passing it.

Blackburn demurred, pointing out that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and three other federal agencies give direct funding to NPR amounting to some $1.5 million to $3 million per year.

(Aha! Another real number! If we cut $3 million, we’d only need 4,666,665 cuts of equal size to pay off the national debt.)

“Our country does – not – have – the – money to spend on this!” Blackburn insisted, emphasizing each word and working up to a real harangue: “NPR does not need the money; they will not be able to get these grants; we will save those dollars! The American taxpayer (there she goes again) has said, ‘Get your fiscal house in order!’ This is a step in that process. I know they (the Democrats, presumably, and not the American taxpayers) don’t like it, but you know what? This is something, this is something we can do, this is something we will do, this is something the American people (t.s.g.a.) want to make certain that we do, so that we get this nation back on a firm fiscal and sound fiscal policy. The day has come that the out-of-control federal spending has to stop! A good place to start is by taking NPR out of the taxpayer pocket!”

Enough of that. Here are two of the more rational comments:

Rep. John Dingell, D-MI, the longest serving member of the House, said, “The majority continues to force members of this body to waste the time and energy of the House, a critical asset of this nation, on political witch hunts with respect to health care and the environment. Now we find that we’re adding public broadcasting to this list. Public broadcasting is a national treasure. It provides us impartial, honest coverage of facts and news. It provides information not available elsewhere, and, yes, it sheds a little bit of culture on our people, something which, probably, my Republican colleagues find offensive. It has done so at very low cost to the public…”

Rep. James Moran, D-VA, said, “This has nothing to do with the deficit. It’s an infinitesimal fraction of our national debt. It jeopardizes nine thousand jobs and it distracts us from solving the real problems this nation faces while trying to destroy one of the primary sources of an enlightened electorate.”

What is this all really about? Obviously it is not about money. What is it about “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” and all those other great programs on NPR that is such a burr under the Republican saddle? (I promise: no more horse metaphors.)

I’ll try to examine that question in my next post. Right now I’m worn out from all the invective.