Government gives $445 million to Corporation for Public Broadcasting on first day of government slimdown

112px-Corporation_for_Public_Broadcasting_logo.svgLOS ANGELES –  Funding for clinical cancer trials and other life-saving research under the National Institutes of Health was cut off in response to the government slimdown, but it looks like the cookie monster will still be knee-deep in chocolate chips (or is it carrots now?)

According to the Daily Treasury Statement and first reported byCNS News, the administration dished out $445 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) on the first day of the slimdown, which means funds for the likes of PBS Newshour, NPR and “Sesame Street” are being spent before cancer research.

“It’s more than irresponsible, it is reprehensible. It’s an ‘in-your-face’ move by the administration, blatantly picking winners and losers in this shutdown,” C. Edmund Wright, a columnist for Breitbart.com and American Thinker, told FOX411. “Public broadcasting is a staple of liberal propaganda.”

President_Barack_ObamaAnd as Media Research Center’s Director of Media Analysis, Tim Graham, pointed out, PBS has hosted two “very friendly” interviews with President Obama in recent weeks.

“It certainly looks like ‘you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours,” he continued. “Liberals see PBS and NPR as their own personal sandbox, as a supposed balance of the ‘capitalist bias’ of the commercial networks, as silly as that sounds.”

The October 1 statement also reveals that the Treasury gave almost the same amount on the first day of the slimdown ($471 million) to the entire Department of Health and Human Services. Social Security Benefits was awarded $171 million, $137 million went to the Postal Service Money Orders and $337 to Unemployment Benefits. The Veterans Affairs programs received $592 million.

According to its website, the CPB is a private, not-for-profit corporation. It states that its biggest single source of revenue for public media entitles is membership, and by law, 95 percent of CPB’s appropriation from the federal government goes to support local television and radio stations, programming and improvements to the public broadcasting system. The corporation also insists that decisions on the amount of federal support for public broadcasting were made two years ahead of the fiscal year, thus Congress approves the FY2013 funding level for CPB during the FY2011 budget cycle.

However, one expert we spoke to said loopholes enable the CPB and other nonprofits like it to receive federal funding while still claiming independence.

“CPB is a nonprofit corporation that is technically separate from the government. So is NeighborWorks, a nonprofit that receives congressional appropriations, just as CPB does. NeighborWorks helped cause the housing bubble; CPB provides the propaganda that anesthetizes the public, preventing people from laying blame for failed policies at the door of the government,” said Matthew Vadum, senior editor at the Capital Research Center. “Keeping a distance by incorporating these entities affords the government plausible deniability when the two nonprofits mess up.”

Reps for CPB and the Office of Management and Budget did not respond to a request for comment.

 

This is a copy of the full article provided by Fox News

(Photos: Wikipedia)

You may also like...