GOP Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has once again mentioned that if elected, he would eliminate funding for PBS. In an interview with Fortune, the former Massachusetts governor said: “There are three major areas I have focused on for reduction in spending. These are in many cases reductions which become larger and larger over time. So first there are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of them but also various subsidy programs — the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some of these things, like those endowment efforts and PBS, I very much appreciate and like what they do in many cases, but I just think they have to strand on their own rather than receiving money borrowed from other countries, as our government does on their behalf.”
Romney has made several similar comments dating to November 2011, when he called for “deep reductions in subsidies” for CPB and other entities. The following month he said that under his presidency, PBS would carry advertising.