Joel Hefley: “What this amendment does is not do away with public broadcasting. I am not trying to do away with public broadcasting.…”

“What this amendment does is not do away with public broadcasting. I am not trying to do away with public broadcasting. What I am trying to do is to do away with the $50 million increase in public broadcasting that is in this. For the life of me, I do not understand how we get to this kind of a point, kind of the business as usual that we just dump more money into every program every year. In the past few years, and I think the gentleman from Illinois explained it very well on the last amendment, the Federal Government has appropriated less and less money each year to the public broadcasting. Let me give colleagues a little history on this. We all know that public broadcasting is funded by 2-year advance appropriations. For example, in 1993, Congress provided $275 million for public broadcasting to use in fiscal year 1996. Since then, we have reduced the yearly appropriation for public broadcasting down to $250 million, appropriated last year for fiscal year 1999.”