What was the intent for the difference between the third and fourth options. I kind of assumed that it’s important to maintain public services in the face of hard times meant they should always be funded. To me the only other meaning would be that they shouldn’t be funded when things are good, which wouldn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Scaling back, or cutting, PBS, NPR, etc. is playing with the public. These programs do have federal funding but also try to sustain themselves through fund raising efforts. These are sacred cows, so to speak, and invoke a visceral reaction for saving. This is a ploy used to gain support for less reactionary cuts by lumping them together as being attacked mercilessly.

The same thing is being tried with the HeadStart Program. If you raise enough voices in outrage against it, then perhaps it will be taken off the “cut heap”. Saved along with it will be hundreds of life sucking entitlements that need to be scrutinized separately. It’s just a ploy.

… cutting or not cutting funding for NPR wouldn’t even make a ripple. 2010 funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (source of federal funds for both PBS + NPR) was $422 million. That’s a Pentagon rounding error. The deficit is well over three thousand times that. That’s like trying to pay off a $20,000 credit card bill by giving up two trips to Starbucks a year.

Social Security, Medicare, Defense. Talking about cuts without touching those three is empty posturing.