Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about Romney’s plan to kill Big Bird.\u00a0 OK, yes, that’s inflammatory language for what Romney wants to do, which is remove federal funding for PBS.<\/p>\n
But that’s not going to help that much.\u00a0 In fact, it won’t matter at all.\u00a0 It’s roughly the equivalent of someone who is $30,000 in debt and saying they are going to fix it by not going to the movies anymore.<\/p>\n
So let’s look at it.\u00a0 The federal government provides PBS with $445 million dollars<\/a>.\u00a0 The federal deficit<\/a> is $14.8 trillion dollars (counting social security and welfare) or $10.1 trillion dollars (publicly held debt only).\u00a0 Of course, the $5 trillion that Romney was talking about is the amount of debt held by foreign investors<\/a>.<\/p>\n Let’s compare:<\/p>\n $5,000,000,000,000 – foreign debt Basically, Romney would need to find 11,000 such programs to cut to reduce the national deficit by his $5 trillion amount.\u00a0 Because that’s the only way to reduce the deficit in a revenue neutral way.\u00a0 Eleven thousand!\u00a0 Are there even 11,000 programs like this?\u00a0 And what would this do to the jobs situation.\u00a0 Even if only 20-30% of that money is jobs, that’s about 1800 jobs making $60k a year.\u00a0 Does anyone know what a cameraman and PBS secretary make?<\/p>\n Now, if the US just didn’t buy an F-22 raptor (that doesn’t work anyway), that’s $150 million dollars (PDF)<\/a>.\u00a0 So, cutting out a wing of 12 Raptors means PBS can be funded for 4 years… not including interest.<\/p>\n What about other government agencies?<\/p>\n I looked at a agency near and dear to my heart, NOAA.\u00a0 When I did this research, I didn’t know what all the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n NOAA is the National Weather Service<\/a>.\u00a0 NOAA is the\u00a0<\/a>National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service<\/a>. Everything from climate research (which is why the GOP wants to cut it) to hurricane forecasting.<\/p>\n NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service<\/a> is responsible for all management, conservation and protection of living marine resources within the United States\u2019 Exclusive Economic Zone (water three to 200 mile offshore).<\/p>\n
\n______$455,000,000 – appropriation to PBS<\/p>\n