By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1
Seven of Kentucky’s eight representatives in Washington D.C. voted in favor of rescinding roughly $9 billion in allocated funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid.
The bill to rollback the funding originally passed the U.S. House of Representatives on June 12 by a 214-212 vote. Kentucky Representative Brett Guthrie and all of Kentucky’s Republican representatives voted in favor of the rollback while Democrat Morgan McGarvey voted no.
At 2:18 a.m. on July 17, the U.S. Senate passed the bill and, with minimal changes, sent it back to the U.S. House by a 51-48 vote. Kentucky Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul supported the bill. By a 216-213 vote the U.S. House passed the Senate-modified bill the next day. Republican U.S. Representatives Andy Barr, James Comer, Brett Guthrie, Thomas Massie and Hal Rogers voted in favor of $9 billion in cuts.
Immediately after the vote, NPR Chief Executive Officer Katherine Maher issued a statement calling the cut an “irreversible loss” to the public radio system, commenting that the effect would be “an unwarranted dismantling of beloved local civic institutions, and an act of Congress that disregards the public will.”
“Public funding has enabled the flourishing of a uniquely American system of unparalleled cultural, informational, and educational programming, and ensured access to vital emergency alerting and reporting in times of crisis — all for about $1.60 per American, every year. Parents and children, senior citizens and students, tribal and rural communities — all will bear the harm of this vote,” Maher said.
McGarvey said on social media ahead of the Friday’s U.S. House vote that “public broadcasting saves lives.”
“I’m voting no, and every House Republican who’s ever claimed to care about rural Americans should too,” he said.
The House vote means Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which acts as a federal pass through for NPR, PBS and other stations, will lose $1.1 billion meant to fund it through the next two years.
The bill will become law upon President Donald Trump’s signature.
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