Mitt Romney continued to stick with his pledge that he will cut PBS funding if he is elected president next month during an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday.
Romney’s views on public broadcasting have become one of the biggest takeaways of the presidential debate last week, almost instantaneously thrusting Sesame Street and Big Bird into the spotlight of the election, reports The Huffington Post .
PBS immediately responded to Romney’s pledge, denouncing the candidate. The Republican Presidential hopeful was also mocked by many for telling moderator Jim Lehrer (who works for PBS) that he was unwilling to pay for public broadcasting in a time when the government is trying to lower spending. The Hill notes that, in the subsequent video interview, Romney stated:
“Big Bird is going to be just fine, Sesame Street is a very successful enterprise. I don’t believe CNN gets funding, y’all stay on the air. And I just think that PBS will be able to make it on its own, just like any one of the other stations and does not require us to go to China to borrow money to keep PBS on the air.”
In the week since the first debate, President Obama’s campaign has reiterated the issues with cutting public broadcasting, a point that Romney believes is much less important than the money spent on food stamps and the discussion about jobs.
The Republican candidate is correct in saying that Sesame Street would not be largely affected if the government cuts off money to PBS since it is a successful show. But PBS has always stated that the real losers wouldn’t be the shows but instead the many rural stations that get more than half of their budget from the government.
Do you think that Mitt Romney is right in wanting to cut off federal funding for PBS?
[iframe src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/IdL8jOJHTsU” width=”640? height=”360?]