Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise to urge my colleagues to vote to against H.R. 1076 which would prohibit federal funding for NPR and the use of federal funds to acquire radio content. Today's Republican attempts to defund NPR will affect stations all across the country. In my district alone, KTSU and KPFT will have to cope with the aftermath of the Republican proposal. These two stations serve predominately poor, minority populations in my district, and the House Republicans are attempting to eliminate their opportunity to provide National Public Radio to their listeners. If this bill were to become law, radio stations in my district would no longer qualify to receive over $743,000 in Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants, and prohibiting the use of these funds to purchase popular NPR programming will make it difficult for stations to attract local listeners and raise funds for the production of local content and station operations. Hundreds of stations rely on public broadcasting funding as a major source of funding, especially rural and minority stations. Some people in my district exclusively listen to these stations. These two stations in Houston and hundreds across the country do not have the money to compete with big corporate stations, and they cannot compete with conservative talk shows because they do not spew out biased, partisan, uncomplimentary, critical messages. They are just reporting the news and bringing it from all over the world.…”