Northwest public broadcasters brace for new reality as Republicans in Congress race to defund public media, foreign aid

WASHINGTON – Northwest public radio and television stations were bracing for the fallout after an overnight vote by House Republicans to rescind about $9 billion in funding Congress had already approved for foreign aid programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports public radio and TV stations across the country.

The Senate voted narrowly to pass the so-called rescissions package early Thursday morning, with all Democrats in opposition and all but a few Republicans supporting the extraordinary action, which Congress hadn’t taken since the turn of the 21st century. Just after midnight Eastern time early Friday morning, the House did the same in a 216-213 vote. Washington Republicans Michael Baumgartner of Spokane and Rep. Dan Newhouse of Sunnyside voted in favor.

“It is not a surprise, but it is still a disappointment that we’re losing this funding,” said John Decker, president and general manager of Spokane Public Radio. “The fact is, though, it’s not going to stop us from doing the work we need to do. It just makes it harder to do it.”

Direct funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting accounts for about 1% of National Public Radio’s budget, according to NPR’s public editor, and roughly 15% of the budget of its TV counterpart, PBS. But local public media stations, especially those in rural parts of the country, rely more heavily on the federal funding, and in turn provide more funding to NPR and PBS by paying to broadcast programs the national outlets produce, like “Morning Edition” and “PBS NewsHour.”

Decker said he understands why people often conflate local stations like Spokane Public Radio with NPR and KSPS-TV with PBS, but he emphasized that defunding public media will hit those local affiliates harder than the national news outlets that Republicans accuse of left-wing political bias. SPR doesn’t intend to lay anyone off or cancel its shows, he said, because the station has been anticipating the cuts since the White House signaled in May that it would ask Congress to rescind the funding.

“It’s just a sad day for America,” Decker said. “And it sort of sends a signal to many Americans who rely on public media as their only free media source that their government feels they don’t deserve to have that.”

The cuts would force SPR to fill a roughly $250,000 hole in its budget, Decker said. At Pullman-based Northwest Public Broadcasting, which broadcasts both TV and radio across Washington and to parts of Idaho, Oregon and British Columbia, the impact is greater.

“I’m holding onto hope that four Republicans will have the balls to stand up and do what they know is right,” said Sueann Ramella, NWPB’s audience director, referring to the number of GOP lawmakers it would take to block the bill. In the end, only two Republicans voted against it.

“At the end of the day, I know this: No matter if this funding is saved or not, NWPB and all of public broadcasting in the nation is forever changed, and I know that other stations are trying to make plans so we can survive,” Ramella said.

Ramella said NWPB, which receives about 20% of its budget from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, will stay on the air but won’t be the same without federal funding. The station’s management is “looking at every nook and cranny” to find savings, even its $200 printing budget.

Republicans have long accused public media, especially NPR, of liberal bias. Baumgartner said he voted for the bill in June – and planned to do the same Thursday night – because he shares that concern and wants to reduce federal spending. The question isn’t whether something like public media is valuable, he said, but whether the federal government should spend taxpayer dollars on it.

“Congress has to do a better job of stewarding every dollar, particularly at a time when we’re deeply in debt and have a 20% annual budget deficit,” Baumgartner said in a brief interview at the Capitol. “I’m somebody who enjoys public radio and public television, but at a time when we’re deeply in debt, one, there’s a cost issue there, but also there’s an issue of ideological balance.”

The bill claws back about $1.1 billion from public broadcasting and nearly $8 billion from foreign aid programs, all money Congress had previously approved on a bipartisan basis through the yearly appropriations process. Republicans have pointed to examples of foreign aid spending they consider wasteful or objectionable, such as arts programs and support for transgender people, but the cuts also include lifesaving medical and food aid.

The version House Republicans passed in June also rescinded $400 million for PEPFAR, a global health program for HIV/AIDS patients that has saved an estimated 26 million lives since it was created by former President George W. Bush in 2003. After some GOP senators objected to defunding PEPFAR, that provision was stripped from the version they sent back to the House on Thursday.

Baumgartner called himself “a fan of foreign aid” and said he was glad to see the PEPFAR funding restored, but he emphasized that assistance for people in other countries “needs to be tied closely to America’s national security.”

Sen. Jim Risch, an Idaho Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has supported foreign aid programs in the past, has also backed the effort to roll back previously approved spending.

“U.S. tax dollars should not subsidize radical programs and organizations that undermine American values,” Risch said in a statement after voting for the bill. “This $9 billion rescissions package cuts woke and excessive funding to ensure the responsible use of Americans’ tax dollars.”

Sen. Mike Crapo, another Idaho Republican, said he voted for the bill “in support of rescinding funds for wasteful foreign aid programs that have deviated from their original intent or that do not promote American interests.”

“By reducing waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending, we can better ensure the long-term viability of the programs most critical for our national security and for global health programs that protect Americans from the spread of fatal diseases,” Crapo said in a statement.

Newhouse, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, was one of several Republicans who publicly expressed concerns with clawing back the funding. But in an interview on June 27, he said he had voted for the bill despite those qualms because he had received private assurances that some funding for public media and foreign aid would be preserved in different forms.

“I haven’t seen anything on paper yet, but that’s a commitment,” Newhouse said, describing an alternative funding source for public media. “There will be some funding available for at least a one-year thing. That was told to us in order to get some support.”

Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, one of four Republicans who voted against the original House bill in June, told reporters at the Capitol on Thursday that he planned to vote for the revised version in part because House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had committed to funding public media later in the year.

In the June interview, Newhouse said he also supports foreign aid but voted to rescind it because he had been assured that some programs of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration has dismantled, could be continued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“On the USAID part, I do think the topic of soft power is important to the country,” he said. “We can’t use military strength all the time, and there’s other things that we can do. And that provides us, I think, a pretty good return on investment, and it’s the right thing to do.”

Democrats have been uniformly opposed to the GOP effort to claw back funding. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday that Republicans can’t credibly say they’re worried about the debt when they passed a massive tax-and-spending bill on July 3 that will add an estimated $3.4 trillion to budget deficits over 10 years.

“Two weeks ago, Republicans said four trillion bucks in tax cuts for the richest people in the world was nothing – literally – and now they are saying a truly tiny fraction of that for rural radio is just too much,” Murray said. “Is this a joke? Are they really that bad at math?”

Murray has argued that if a president can simply choose not to spend money Congress has approved – as Trump has repeatedly done – or the majority party can rescind funding lawmakers have passed through the bipartisan appropriations process, Democrats have no reason to trust that process.

Whatever the rescissions bill means for Congress, Decker said it represents the end of federally funded public broadcasting. While he isn’t hopeful that lawmakers will restore the funding, he said he wants people in the Inland Northwest to know they’re important to their public radio and TV stations.

“In spite of what the Trump administration and many politicians may want us to think, this isn’t an us-against-them proposition,” he said. “We want folks to know we are still going to be there for them, and of course we hope that they’re going to be there for us, too.”

Ramella said that if Americans want public media to exist, they will need to become members and contribute money, even if they don’t agree with everything a station broadcasts. She described a recent phone call she received from a listener who said that “while she loved and appreciated 90% of what NWPB broadcasts,” she didn’t like some of its programs and wouldn’t support it anymore.

“This country right now is at a tipping point,” Ramella said, “where it is willing to throw out 90% of good for 10% of ‘I disagree.’ ”