House's Proposed End of Advance CPB Funding Unlikely to Stick: Senate Appropriations Leads

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and the leaders of the Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee told us they’re geared up to fight against lower chamber Republicans’ bid to defund CPB via FY 2024 federal funding legislation. The House Appropriations LHHS Subcommittee voted earlier this month to advance its funding bill without any mention of CPB funding, meaning the program wouldn’t have any advance federal funding for FY 2026 (see 2307140069).

DeLauro and the Senate LHHS leaders -- Chair Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and ranking member Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. -- insist any proposal to zero out CPB funding is highly unlikely to make it through the appropriations process due to resistance in the majority-Democratic Senate. Public broadcasting advocates are nonetheless ringing alarm bells. Congress allocated CPB $535 million for FY 2025 in the FY 2023 omnibus appropriations package (see 2212210077). President Joe Biden proposed increasing its annual appropriation to $575 million for FY26.

“I’m not even sure” the House LHHS “bill will even get to the floor, it’s so bad,” said DeLauro, who's also lead Democrat on the subpanel. “It’s an overall nonstarter and an attack on public education,” but she said she’s not sure whether Appropriations Democrats will seek an amendment in an eventual full committee markup that would restore CPB’s FY26 funding. House Appropriations hadn't released its markup schedule for this week by Friday afternoon. The panel and the office of House LHHS Chairman Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., didn’t comment.

“I’m not too concerned” about CPB’s future funding prospects “at this juncture” despite House Appropriations’ actions, Baldwin told us. “We’re marking up our own funding bills very separate from the House process that’s unfolding and in order to pass the Senate we need to have bipartisan agreement” on those measures. “The House is marking up extremely partisan” appropriations bills “that if they’re able to pass on the floor at all will likely only do so with Republican votes,” while a final measure that comes through the bicameral conference process “is I’m sure likelier to be closer to what the bipartisan Senate version” does on CPB.

“I don’t believe” the “poison pills and cuts that” House Appropriations included in its FY24 measures “will last through this process," Baldwin said. She declined to say whether Senate Appropriations will increase CPB funding for FY26 to the level Biden and public broadcasting advocates seek but expected it to at least match the $535 million Congress agreed to last year. “I don’t agree with” House Appropriations Republicans’ plan to zero out CPB funding, Capito said. “Obviously there’s a role for public broadcasting that’s been long-established and quite honestly it’s one I’ll listen to” during the appropriations process. Senate Appropriations plans to mark up its LHHS bill at 10:30 a.m. Thursday in 106 Dirksen.

The funding struggle for public broadcasting is “off to a very dangerous start” given House LHHS’ actions, said America’s Public Television Stations CEO Patrick Butler in an interview. Although CPB has repeatedly faced appropriations battles, it's rare for the subcommittee to vote to propose zeroing out that funding so early in the process. The House-side Republican Study Committee proposed zeroing out CPB funding in June (see 2306150063). Then-President Donald Trump repeatedly sought to zero out CPB funding (see 2002100056). Many steps remain in the appropriations process but time in which to accomplish them is limited, Butler said: “It’s all a bit murky right now.”

Congress’ advance CPB funding policy has been in place since the 1970s to give public broadcasting a buffer against “undue political influence,” Butler said. He pushed back against a House LHHS statement that claims eliminating advance funding would force CPB to compete with other programs for federal money in future appropriations cycles, saying “we’ve been competing for funding for 50 years.” APTS is pushing back on the proposal with its grassroots lobbying effort Protect My Public Media and with local stations contacting their lawmakers, Butler said.

Reductions in funding for CPB hit rural stations the hardest, said Gray Miller attorney Todd Gray, a longtime attorney for noncommercial educational broadcasters. Large urban stations have a large donor base and more readily available sources of underwriting and other revenue, making them less dependent on CPB funds. More far-flung stations can be the only broadcaster serving a given area, giving them fewer donors and a smaller cushion for budget reductions, Gray told us.

A defunded CPB would affect “a significant portion of our revenue,” said Rhode Island PBS President David Piccerelli. WSBE-TV Providence is Rhode Island’s only PBS station, but the station’s donor base is limited because its viewing area overlaps with the much larger WGBH Boston. Piccerelli told us he's concerned about the appropriations situation, but it's not yet affecting the station’s budget plans. Gray and Piccerelli said they're concerned about the zeroed funding but have faith in the process and public media advocates. “This is not at all the first time the suggestion has been to zero out funding, and always it has survived, and the advance funding mechanism has been maintained,” Gray said.