Jim DeMint: Hey, I've Got An Idea Of How We Can Cut $4.5 Billion Over Ten Years

No more funding for NPR and PBS (at Hot Air).

I wish he'd not included PBS -- yet. Because you know, everytime this comes up, parents get outraged that Sesame Street will be off the air. That is what keeps the funding coming -- Sesame Street.

This is one of those situations where people are, as Obama might say, irrational and fearful and even clingy about their children's safe-harbor programming, and some politics needs to be done here, to prepare/expedite some way to get Sesame Street on to another (commercial) channel.

Now, the fact of the matter is, the government doesn't need to do this -- Sesame Street is a billion dollar plus a year industry, with toys and such, and the show is their advertising for that. Sesame Street would, if necessary, pay channels to run their program to keep their billion dollar revenue stream coming.

But this has to be explained to people, and some deal should be put into the works before this sort of thing.

Am I a squish? No, I'm a guy who actually wants to cut funding for PBS, and not just talk about cutting funding for PBS. And the Sesame Street thing has to be addressed, or else people will freak.

I hope we've not become so uncompromising in our principles that we can't have a bit of politics in politics anymore.

posted by Ace at 01:46 PM

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