In the last few weeks, a newly Republican House of Representatives has been battling with President Barack Obama over his proposed $3.7 trillion budget for the 2012 fiscal year.
Many newly elected Republicans won their seats by targeting the rampant spending and record deficits incurred by the Obama administration in the past two years, so it makes sense they’re giving him a hard time.
While Obama’s proposed budget would reduce the deficit by $1.1 trillion, it would take 10 years to do so. In the meantime, we’ll add a record $1.6 trillion to the national debt this year.
I agree with Republicans who believe we need to bring some level of balance to our national budget, but they’re going about the process in completely the wrong way. Many Republicans say we can balance the budget without raising taxes by slashing non-military discretionary spending.
This idea is a lie.
Discretionary spending is technically everything the government spends money on other than Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (which combined make up roughly 40 percent of the budget) and the interest on the national debt (which commands about 6 percent).
Military and defense spending is considered discretionary but still makes up about 20 percent of the budget.
So if we add it all up we find non-military discretionary spending only accounts for about a third of the budget, and it includes programs like the Department of Transportation, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Justice. More importantly, one-third of $3.7 trillion is about $1.2 trillion, which is about $400 billion less than the projected deficit.
We could literally cut every discretionary program we have and still be nowhere close to a balanced budget.
One discretionary spending program on the chopping block near and dear to my heart is public broadcasting, specifically NPR and PBS. Apparently, Republicans think Cookie Monster needs to pull himself up by his bootstraps, and the “Car Talk” guys should start charging for advice.
Historically, public broadcasting receives about $400 million in federal funds annually, which sounds like a lot of money. But it’s important to remember those funds are shared between dozens of organizations and stations and usually account for a relatively small percentage of their total operating budgets.
Federal dollars make up about 15 percent of PBS funding while only financing about 1 percent of NPR’s total funding. These low percentages are slightly deceiving because individual NPR and PBS stations, especially in poor or rural areas, may rely on federal funds for up to 50 percent of their total budget.
These areas arguably need public broadcasting more than anyone because of limited options for the arts, foreign news and educational programming.
Also keep in mind $400 million is about one-tenth of 1 percent of the national budget, or slightly more than $1 per American annually.
According to a survey conducted by Hart Research and American Viewpoint, 69 percent of Americans oppose defunding public broadcasting, including 56 percent of the Republicans sampled.
Respondents also ranked public broadcasting as the second-best value for their tax dollars behind national defense and ahead of Social Security, food safety and transportation. They also ranked PBS as America’s most trusted institution, ahead of courts by more than 20 percent and ahead of newspapers and cable TV by more than 30 percent.
Public broadcasting provides wonderful educational programming, and journalism in an industry increasingly dominated by sensationalist garbage like Fox News, MSNBC and Larry the Cable Guy’s new home, the “History” Channel.
Until Congress can get real, raise taxes and start cutting some of the hundreds of billions of dollars we spend on “defense” every year, leave Big Bird, Elmo and Ira Glass out of it.
Andrew Shockey is a 20-year-old biological engineering sophomore from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Ashockey.
 
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Contact Andrew Shockey at [email protected]