Romney says ‘bye’ to Big Bird

“I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS.”

This statement from Mitt Romney has caused uproar among Sesame Street supporters nationwide.

However, once the rhetoric is ignored, the context of Romney’s statement helps provide the bigger picture.

“I will eliminate all programs by this test, if they don’t pass it. Is the program so critical it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it? And if not, I’ll get rid of it. Obamacare’s on my list,” Romney said during the first debate. “I’m sorry, Jim,” Romney continued. “I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS.”

Romney’s criteria for cutting spending is solid, and “Obamacare” is an example of a program that would save a lot of money if cut. PBS was just a side note in the context of the debate, and not the focal point of Romney’s economic reforms.

Likely PBS was brought up not because Romney wanted to use it as a scapegoat, but because the debate moderator, Jim Lehrer, had been a news anchor for PBS, and it made sense to talk about it in that situation.

Instead of debating the facts and the main points, Obama’s response to Romney’s statements included an attack ad featuring Big Bird of Sesame Street.

“Big, yellow, a menace to our economy — Mitt Romney knows it is not Wall Street we need to worry about, it’s Sesame Street,” the ad narrator said.

Brian Montopoli and Steve Chaggari of CBS News reported that PBS even asked for the advertisement to stop because they did not want the show to be politicized.

One fact that has been missed by both sides is that Big Bird is in no danger of going extinct. Amy Bingham of ABC News reported that nearly all funding for Sesame Street is from private sources.

Obama did not debate Romney’s criteria for managing spending or the major cuts Romney proposed. Instead, Obama chose to go the route of emotional appeal and straw man attacks to distract voters from the real issue, how to manage the debt crisis.

Despite this, there were some slightly more legitimate concerns about the PBS spending cuts.

Backers of PBS note that the amount of spending that would be cut is minimal compared to the rest of the U.S. budget. The budget for the Public Broadcasting Commission that funds PBS and National Public Radio is $445 million, according to Elizabeth Flock of U.S. News.

The idea that something is just a small part of the budget is what got the U.S. into this mess in the first place. Every cut to the budget counts, and PBS will certainly not be the only casualty.

Another objection is about the affect PBS cuts would have on television stations.
“The vast majority of taxpayer funds for PBS ($1.35 per person per year) goes to local stations, many of which serve rural areas, where losing funding would mean stations going dark,” LeVar Burton said in an article on CNN.

Even if true, this statement only shows that the government should not fund PBS.
One of the key aspects of this nation is the existence of a free press. A primary purpose of the media is to hold the government accountable. This is not done when the government pays the bills. The media has no incentive to bite the hand that feeds it.
“PBS programming, from ‘Teletubbies’ to ‘NewsHour,’ has been criticized for its supposed liberal bias,” Meredith Blake of the LA Times said.

It is certainly worth wondering whether government subsidizing adds merit the public’s perception of PBS.

Despite claims to the contrary, Big Bird is not in any imminent danger. Democrats, in an attempt to distract voters from the real issues, are simply using him as a blatantly false scare tactic.

On the broader scale, PBS itself does not have any inherent right to exist. The basic principle of capitalism and free market enterprise is that businesses must face the consequences of their decisions. If a business is run properly, it will most likely succeed. If not, it will most likely fail. It is not the government’s job to play kingmaker in the business world.

In this time of massive debt, PBS must be allowed to either sink or swim, and Romney is correct in saying that the government needs to step out of the way.