Political Quotes

“I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I do think our colleagues across the aisle are missing the point on this. We are responsible for making certain that this fiscal house gets in order. This is just another of those steps. This bill is not about taking NPR off the air. There is nothing here that says you will take NPR off the air. What it simply says is, if you are an affiliate station and if you want to pay NPR dues, you can't use taxpayer dollars. If you want to buy NPR programming, you cannot use taxpayer dollars for that. The taxpayers want NPR out of their pockets. Now, there is plenty of popular programming out there, and if listeners want to hear that, we are not trying to disenfranchise those listeners. Indeed, if listeners like the NPR they have, they can keep it. What we're saying is that they need to raise the money for this. We went through the demographics for NPR: college-educated; 63 percent have full-time jobs; the average household income is upwards of $86,000 a year. They have a list of sponsors who give over $1 million a year to NPR. NPR, itself, has said it does not need our taxpayer funding. So this is a place that we can save some money. Now, to those who say it is a job-killing program, may I remind you, indeed, to develop local programming, I articulated 17 different positions that are attached to creating even one radio show. Unlike some of my colleagues, Mr.…”