Sen. Klobuchar Says People Will Not Get Alerts on Natural Disasters Without PBS and NPR

GEIST: “Senator, good morning, good to see you. Also happening —“
Klobuchar: “Yes.”
GEIST: “— on Capitol Hill, let’s talk about some of that business. The Senate voting yesterday to advance debate on funding cuts requested by President Trump. They’re aimed at clawing back more than a billion dollars previously granted to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with nearly $8 billion allocated for international aid efforts. USAID programs like PEPFAR, which now we’re hearing, actually may be reinstated, which is good news. We’ll see if that actually happens. But how do you work as a body now to get back some of what’s been taken away?”
Klobuchar: “This is completely outrageous. Remember, this is money that was already decided on by a Republican House, a Democratic Senate. It was a bipartisan agreement. And if they can just start to go in there and take away these incredibly important funds, the sky’s the limit. So that’s my first point to our Republican colleagues. What are you doing? I guess you’ll just rubber stamp anything Donald Trump wants. But the second one is, look at what this is for. Just as we’ve seen these weather disasters, including horrifically in Texas, but the fires in Arizona and the like, in many remote areas or in states like Florida with hurricane season upon us, they rely on a series of public broadcasting to get alerts out. And when it works well, when you actually have a system set up, it works well. This is not the time to cut back on public radio and public TV. And one thing people don’t know, 2-1 on the percentage that comes from federal funding, 2-1, it’s double for rural, the percentage over what it is for urban and other stations. So that’s the case we’re going to be making in addition to the obvious on the foreign aid, when it’s really about our security, when we’re in the middle of all these peace negotiations in the Mideast, why would you mess around with funding that people have relied on and trust America to provide?”