Congress Is Going To Be Interesting For At Least The Next Month Or So

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Yesterday The Hill's Blog Briefing Room reported that the Republicans in Congress are planning to force a vote on defunding National Public Radio (NPR) in response to the firing of Juan Williams last month. 

According to the article:

"House GOP Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) and Rep. Doug Lamborn (Colo.) said that cutting funds to the publicly subsidized news organization was the winner of the conference's weekly "YouCut" contest, in which the public votes online on spending items they want eliminated."

I have mixed emotions about this.  I totally disagree with the funding of NPR on principle.  I think the network is perfectly capable of funding itself through good marketing techniques--Big Bird, Elmo, Bob the Builder, etc. ought to be able to raise a significant amount of revenue.  I think the firing of Juan Williams was wrong, but I think that is between NPR and Juan Williams.  In firing Juan Williams, NPR revealed that it is not a well-balanced source of information, but again, to me, that is between NPR and Juan Williams.

The article points out:

"Under the "YouCut" program, the GOP has promised to force votes on spending cuts chosen by online voters each week that the House is in session. Each week, a series of proposed spending cuts is posted online and the House GOP takes up the cut chosen by the most voters.

"The NPR defunding defeated the termination of "Exchanges with Historic Whaling and Trading Partners Program" and the Presidential Election Fund.

"Nearly every one of the items proposed in the Democratic-controlled House has failed to pass. Republicans take control of the House next year."

I suspect that most of these cuts will continue to be voted down during the next month or so, but it will be interesting to see what happens when the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives in January.  Remember, the House of Representatives holds the purse strings--they control the spending, and the voters made it rather clear in this last election how they felt about continuing the current spending habits.

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This page contains a single entry by Granny G published on November 18, 2010 3:08 PM.

More News From The Lame Duck was the previous entry in this blog.

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