The draft for the House Appropriations Committee’s fiscal year 2012 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill, introduced Sept. 29 by subcommittee Chair Denny Rehburg (R-Mont.), would prohibit CPB from funding NPR and requests a report from CPB on how to remove NPR totally from federal funding by 2014.
Under the bill, CPB would receive the already-appropriated amount of $445 million for that year, including $6 million for digital projects.
Other agencies in the draft bill would fare worse for the year that began Oct. 1. Discretionary funding in the multiagency bill would shrink 2.5 percent; the sum is 15.2 percent less than President Obama proposed.
A spokesperson for the House committee told Current that details of the NPR provision will be made public when the bill comes to the full committee for markup, which has not yet been scheduled.
NPR responded in a statement: “Eliminating or limiting federal funds will have far-reaching, negative impacts on local stations and, ultimately, on the listeners and communities that rely upon them. This impact will be most pronounced in rural and underserved communities, where local media choices are already limited and declining.”