There Are Better Places To Cut First Pro Funding Agency Is Worth Fighting For.

Let’s get personal about the proposed cuts in public radio and public TV funding.

Think of your own household finances. Imagine they aren’t looking so good. Over the years, you’ve run up the credit cards. Then the adjustable rate mortgage began to rise.

To solve the problem, would you unplug the radio and TV? If you did, people might think it crazy.

But that’s how Congress has been acting these last few weeks.

The politicians in power have made a big whoop-de-do over their resolve to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The House of Representatives has passed legislation that would cut $47 million out of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s budget next year and $94 million out of its budget in 1997.

Big whoopee. The net effect is simply to make small stations such as Spokane’s KPBX public radio and KSPS-TV suffer.

These local stations receive about 16 percent of their operating budgets from the government. Although not doing much for true fiscal discipline, the actions of Congress will put a big dent in the operations of two classy local institutions.

And for what end? All the posturing and posing about the so-called frills of public broadcasting is just a lot of hot air being blown for cheap political purposes.

If Congress wants to cut some funds for the good of the country, there are plenty of places to get out the knife. This newspaper has pointed out some places to cut.

A little more than a year ago, we identifed millions of dollars wasted by the U.S. Forest Service when it builds roads to nowhere to support logging operations which don’t make the federal government a dime.

Cut those millions. It would help.

Last fall, the paper pointed out that $5 million a day goes to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation - and $1 million of it is wasted.

Cut that. It would help even more.

Congress should climb off the the back of public radio and public TV. Cutting it all wouldn’t make even a ripple in the ocean of federal debt.

Instead, Congress could recall the words of Winston Churchill during the dark days of World War II. When asked if he were ready to cut all the budget for the arts, he said no and asked, “Then, what we would be fighting for?”

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