Congress shouldn’t be forcing taxpayers to spend a half-billion dollars a year subsidizing news outlets that produce biased, fake news that offends more than half the nation, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said Tuesday.
In Senate remarks, Kennedy called for the government to stop funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB):
“President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency is looking for fat to trim, Mr. President.
“As far as I’m concerned, this gravy train – this gravy train with biscuit wheels called the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – is the perfect example of a project the American people no longer need and should not fund.”
After providing examples of blatantly biased headlines and slanted content published by National Public Radio, Sen. Kennedy said he wasn’t trying to censor the news outlets, but it’s “immoral” to force taxpayers to fund them:
“I’m all for this, if that’s what these outlets want to do. But, I’m not for taking $500 million every single year and giving it to these stations (CPB) to the exclusion of everybody else. That’s immoral.”
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“We are running $36 trillion in debt. This is disgraceful in 2025. It is disgraceful whether it is left-of-center opinion journalism or right-of-center opinion journalism. It is disgraceful to the American people to have to fund this rot. It doesn’t mean the rot doesn’t have a right to exist, but they don’t have a right to taxpayer money.”
Kennedy went on to highlight some of the ways NPR has spent the billions of dollars taxpayers have been forced to give it:
“Since 1970, the United States Congress has given NPR more than $14.5 billion. With all those taxpayer dollars, NPR bought a $201 million office space just up the road from the Capitol. It’s swell office space, two hundred million bucks’ worth...
“NPR pays its hosts as much as $532,000 a year. It pays its Chief Diversity Officer $320,000 a year. It’s pretty good work, if you can get it.”
