The House Slaps UN & PBS

The House has passed a couple of bills slapping a couple of organizations that need slapping - the UN and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. First the UN:

Culminating years of frustration with the performance and behavior of the United Nations, the House voted Friday to slash U.S. contributions to the world body if it does not substantially change the way it operates.

The 221-184 vote, which came despite a Bush administration warning that such a move could actually sabotage reform efforts, was a strong signal from Congress that a policy of persuasion wasn't enough to straighten out the U.N.

"We have had enough waivers, enough resolutions, enough statements," said House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., the author of the legislation. "It's time we had some teeth in reform."

The legislation would withhold half of U.S. dues to the U.N.'s general budget if the organization did not meet a list of demands for change. Failure to comply would also result in U.S. refusal to support expanded and new peacekeeping missions. The bill's prospects in the Senate are uncertain.

The bill will probably never get out of the Senate. My guess is that Senate Dems will filibuster any attempts to hold the UN responsible for its mismanagement. We already know from the filibuster of John Bolton that the Senate Dems are not in favor of UN reform.

The UN is an organization badly in need of some tough love. Bolton is just the guy to do it, and if the Dems don't put an end to this silly filibuster, then maybe Bush should just stop all funding to the UN until they do.

And now, PBS:

Public television stations and National Public Radio would lose 25 percent of their funding next year under a bill cleared by a House committee Thursday night, although some of their funding for future years would be restored.

The moves came as the House Appropriations panel approved a tightly drawn spending bill for labor, health and education programs. For the first time since the early days of GOP control of Congress 10 years ago, the measure, taken as a whole, makes actual cuts to the programs funded by the bill.

The bill is perhaps the most controversial spending bill that passes Congress each year, and Senate GOP moderates have traditionally forced more money into it. Tight budget times, however, promise to make that difficult this time around.

The measure eliminates almost 50 programs totaling $2.3 billion and cuts many others, including a $100 million cut from an already-enacted budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the budget year starting Oct. 1. The corporation provides grants to local public broadcasting stations and creators of programming.

I'm not really sure why the U.S. taxpayer should be providing ANY funding to the PBS and NPR. If their programming is good enough that people will want to watch it or listen to it, they'll support it with donations and corporate gifts. If not, it shouldn't be on the air. Is it really proper for U.S. taxpayers to be billed to support the Teletubbies?

The programming on NPR is notoriously lefty. If they can't attract advertising support to keep them on the air (which they can't), then they should be allowed to fail like every other commercial radio venture. It shouldn't be up to taxpayers to keep funding flops.