Last week, after late-night voting sessions in Congress, President Trump signed a rescission package that included more than $9 billion in spending cuts, including the elimination of a billion dollars in funding for NPR and PBS. Conservatives hailed it as a win for small government. Liberals say the funding cuts will be a disaster. The truth is that the cuts, though certainly necessary, don’t go nearly far enough in restoring fiscal sanity to the federal budget.
NPR and PBS emerged during the Lyndon Johnson administration in the 1960s and 1970s. Both NPR and PBS have been rife with accusations of bias and woke content. Ronald Reagan sought to defund both organizations in the 1980s and succeeded in reducing the funding they received. Before the rescission package, both NPR and PBS received significant federal funding.
There are several reasons why NPR and PBS needed to be defunded. First is the question of political bias. In NPR’s newsroom, for example, there are 87 registered Democrats and not a single registered Republican. Even if we charitably assume that the folks in NPR’s newsroom do their best to suppress their bias, we can’t expect that their political preferences will not play at least some role in how they report on the news.
Back in the 2020 election cycle, NPR did not cover the Hunter Biden laptop story. This matters because a survey found that 18% of Biden voters would have reconsidered their vote had they known about the laptop story. Therefore, public money should not be going to NPR and PBS because they act in a partisan manner.
The second reason why defunding NPR and PBS is the right move is on constitutional grounds. Nowhere in the Constitution is permission given to Congress to fund media outlets. By giving the government this permission, we allow Congress to pick winners and losers and therefore interfere with our freedom of the press. Although NPR and PBS are not on the level of Russia Today in Russia or the People’s Daily in China, government media have no place in a free society.
The rescission package is a step in the right direction in terms of constitutional law and wasteful spending, but it does not go nearly far enough. As of writing, the U.S. national debt is at $37 trillion and climbing by the minute. We would need another four hundred rescission packages to come close to paying off the national debt.
Contrary to what Elon Musk and DOGE promised, those savings are not going to come through eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. The truth is that our massive debt is driven by entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid. Some projections forecast that Social Security and Medicare will go bankrupt within the next 10 years if the programs are not reformed. Social security and other entitlements need to be reformed in conjunction with other spending cuts. Privatizing the Postal Service and Amtrak, cutting subsidies, would also get the country closer to balancing the budget.
This can happen only if the American people show their congressmen that they want fiscal responsibility. In American politics, cuts or reforms to entitlements are career suicide. President Bush was excoriated for his proposed reforms that, in all likelihood, would have saved entitlements. American voters need to stop punishing fiscal responsibility and stop rewarding politicians who promise free stuff. Until that happens, we can’t expect our politicians to act more responsibly.
Fans of small government should be cheering the rescission package. It makes needed cuts to government spending and eliminates a violation of the Constitution. However, a lot of work remains to be done. Economic chaos and the loss of credibility for the United States government are among the things we have to look forward to if Congress does not press forward.
Matt Cookson is an alumnus of the Young Voices Contributor Program and was a Middle East history and policy fellow with Young Voices. He also works in the supply chain for a U.S. Defense contractor. His commentary has appeared in the Mises Institute, Real Clear Politics, the National Interest, Providence Magazine, China Source, and the Idaho Freedom Foundation. You can follow him on X @MattCookson95.
Image via Picryl.