Katie Porter: “Mr. Chairman, as well-intentioned as this amendment might be, I believe that it would very much undermine the efforts of…”

“Mr. Chairman, as well-intentioned as this amendment might be, I believe that it would very much undermine the efforts of the subcommittee and the committee to graduate public broadcasting off the Federal subsidy, and we believe that we are making great progress in that regard. Mr. Fields of Texas, the chairman of the authorizing subcommittee, and I met with officials of CPB, NPR, and PBS within the last 2 weeks, and we had I think a very, very productive meeting and understanding that our intention was that CPB become independent of the Federal subsidy, that they work on a plan that would provide for alternative revenue streams, and that they work also to incorporate a concept of graduation from subsidy for member stations who do not need it within their plans and to reduce or eliminate station overlap, of which there is some involved, particularly on the television side. We believe that the cuts that we proposed are very substantial, 15 percent next year and 30 percent the following year. We believe that it allows them adequate time to adjust to the concept of coming off the Federal subsidy, and we believe very strongly that the Crane amendment would undermine these efforts.”