GOP House? You're not saving taxpayers money with this NPR thing anyway

That House vote on NPR funding I've been writing about?  Turns out the Rethugs haven't thought it all out.


At all.


From Think Progress blog:


Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) noted on Fox "News" that the bill voted on earlier this week would not save a dime of taxpayer money:

The federal government does not subsidize NPR directly. Instead, the government funds the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a government entity, which has discretion to provide funding to whichever private radio producers it chooses. H R 1076 does not actually save taxpayer dollars; it merely blocks CPB from exercising its discretion to send funding to NPR. The funds CPB does not send to NPR under the bill are returned to CPB to be spent subsidizing other private radio producers. I offered an amendment in the Rules Committee to require that any funds not sent to NPR be redirected to pay down the deficit, but the amendment was ruled out of order. Therefore, public broadcasting will not see any reduction in federal funding even if this bill becomes law.

"...as Amash and many Democrats have correctly pointed out, the bill doesn’t actually save taxpayer money — it merely moves around money already allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, away from NPR and to other public broadcasting operations. Amash also wrote that the bill is 'arguably unconstitutional and definitely violates the Rule of Law,' because 'it likely is a bill of attainder.'”

I would only find the Republican leadership in Washington funny if they weren't also so danged evil.

And selfish.

And greedy.

And too frequently effective, in spite of themselves.

Have a great weekend, ya'll.

Link to original post:   http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/18/gop-rep-npr-defunding-does-not-save-money/