Cleaning Up

Statement

This week in Washington, I was honored to be re-elected by my colleagues to the House Republican Leadership team for the next Congress.

In addition to my role as NRCC Chairman, I look forward to leading New Member Development, working with our new Members to mentor them into becoming successful Members of Congress. And I am very proud that at least 86 new Republican members next Congress will play a pivotal role in ensuring that we listen to the American people and promote an agenda for American prosperity.

In fact, my colleagues in the Republican Conference and I have already taken steps this week to reduce government waste and help restore confidence in Congress. On Thursday, we voted unanimously to ban earmarks for the 112th Congress.

As you may know, an "earmark" is funding requested by a Member of Congress for a specific project in a congressional district. While some earmarks serve valuable purposes, such as infrastructure and research projects, wasteful earmarks have unfortunately polluted the earmark process. Now earmarks have become a symbol of broken Washington to the American people.

That is why I have chosen not to request earmarks the last two years, and I fully support my Conference's earmark moratorium to ensure that we focus on balancing the budget and creating a more transparent and accountable process for necessary spending. The American people have called on Congress to cut spending and reform government, and I believe that the earmark moratorium is an important sign of our commitment to pursing those goals.

YouCut Vote: NPR Funding
On Thursday, my Conference colleagues and I brought another YouCut initiative to the House floor, this time forcing a vote on eliminating taxpayer funding for National Public Radio (NPR).

As you may remember, YouCut is an innovative project that my Conference colleagues and I launched to allow the American people to choose what government spending they would like for Congress to eliminate. Since the program began in May 2010, over 2.4 million YouCut votes have been cast online or by text message.

This week's YouCut initiative to cut federal funding for NPR would save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. In just the last two years, NPR has receive nearly $9 million in direct taxpayer funding through grants under various federal agencies, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education, and the National Endowment for the Arts. NPR also receives indirect taxpayer funding through federal grants to public radio stations that in turn purchase NPR programming.

Flow of Federal Tax Dollars to NPR (Courtesy of the Minority Whip's

Since federal dollars account for only a portion of NPR's funding, eliminating the taxpayer dollars should not materially affect NPR's ability to operate. I believe that news organizations should stand on their own -- not propped up by your hard-earned tax dollars. And as you may know, last month NPR displayed a concerning intolerance for diverse viewpoints and debate with the firing of commentator Juan Williams, underscoring the need to stop taxpayer subsidies to the news outlet.

Unfortunately, our common-sense and cost-saving YouCut initiative was defeated by the Democrat Majority by a vote of 239 -- 171, with only three Democrats joining a united Republican Conference on the vote. Nevertheless, House Republicans plan to institute the YouCut voting program for spending cuts each week in the new Republican Congress that starts in January.

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