Eliot Engel: “Mr. Chairman, I rise strongly in opposition to this amendment. There is no reason to have any kind of an assault on…”

“Mr. Chairman, I rise strongly in opposition to this amendment. There is no reason to have any kind of an assault on public broadcasting when public broadcasting has been so successful and it is a public-private relationship that works. We talk a lot about eliminating wasteful Government programs. I think we are all for eliminating wasteful Government programs. But when we have a program that works, when we have a program that is not wasteful, when we have a program that reaches so many millions upon millions of Americans, why would we want to do anything to harm it? It seems to me that these are the kinds of programs that we ought to be pumping more money into, because they have been successful; not trying to pull money away from it or trying to kill it. Public broadcasting is a private-public partnership that works. It is a success story that demonstrates what the Government and the private sector can do when we work together. CPB funds serve as seed money for new programs and station support. For every Federal dollar invested, public broadcasting raises $6 additional. This Federal seed money is crucial to public broadcasting stations, especially to those in underserved and rural areas of the country, because it provides the fund-raising base needed to sustain noncommercial programming.”