Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1076, Prohiniting Federal Funding of National Public Radio

Floor Speech

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the ranking member for the time, and I rise in strong opposition to this closed rule and to the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, the process in this House is awful. On this bill, H.R. 1076, there were no hearings at all; and to top it off, we had an emergency Rules Committee called last night for consideration, an emergency. Do you think it was about jobs? Do you think it was about health care? No, it was about de-funding NPR. That's what this new majority thinks is an emergency, not jobs, not the economy, but de-funding the National Public Radio.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1076 is a horrible idea, and I hope everybody in this Chamber realizes that this bill doesn't cut $1, not one dime, not one penny from the Federal deficit.

We all know what's going on here. The reason this bill is before us is that a discredited, right-wing activist recently made a selectively edited, misleading, 11-minute video of a 2-hour conversation. The target of his little sting was a fund-raising executive at NPR who no longer works there.

Mrs. Blackburn from the Energy and Commerce Committee made it clear in the Rules Committee last night that their justification for this bill is that the American people should not be forced to subsidize content with which they might not agree. Well, that's a lousy way to make decisions, in my view; but if my Republican friends insist on going down this road, Mr. Speaker, then we should be fair and balanced in the way we do it.

Over the past several years, it has become clear that the Fox News channel is widely biased. They continue to employ a talk show host who called President Obama a racist. They continue to employ several prospective Republican Presidential candidates as ``analysts,'' giving them hours and hours of free air time, and their parent company has donated millions and millions of dollars to GOP-linked groups.

Yesterday, I offered an amendment in the Rules Committee to prohibit Federal funds, taxpayer dollars from being used for advertising on the partisan political platform of Fox News. If my friends on the other aisle want to strip funding from NPR because they believe wrongly, in my view, that NPR is biased, then we should be given the same opportunity. Unfortunately, my amendment was defeated on a party-line vote. Again, this is a closed rule. So much for the open process that we were promised.

I also offered an amendment to determine how and where hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on television advertising, not particularly controversial. According to a Rand study, the Department of Defense alone spent over $600 million in taxpayer money advertising in 2007, and I believe we should figure out whether that spending is a good use of taxpayer dollars. That amendment was also blocked on a party-line vote. Again, this is a big fat closed rule that we're dealing with here.

Mr. Speaker, this bill was rushed to the House floor again without a single hearing, without a single markup. So much for regular order.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, over the last few days, my office has been flooded with calls from constituents urging me to reject this bill and to continue to support programming on National Public Radio.

My friends talk about the will of the American people. The will of the American people want us to reject what you are doing here today, and that's exactly what I will do today. I urge my colleagues to reject this closed rule and vote ``no'' on the underlying bill.

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