When I planned to write my print TIME column this week on NPR and the James O’Keefe tapes, I was concerned that public radio might no longer be in the news by the end of the week. Silly me!
Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to cut off federal funding to NPR. Here’s what the vote does not mean: that Congress will cut off funding to NPR. First, there’s the open secret that the bill would never get past the Senate, where Republican senators like Saxby Chambliss have expressed support for public broadcasting. Second, the theoretical bill would stop direct federal funding to NPR—of which there is hardly any.
Most federal money goes to local stations. The bill does not eliminate this money either. Instead, it forbids them to spend it on national programming (that’s how they get NPR shows, their most popular and pledge-generating programs). But they can evidently spending it on other things, freeing up at least some money for NPR spending. So: almost no money saved, if the bill were going to become law, which it won’t. But a lot of Congresspeople got to make speeches to rile up their base.
