Put a fork in Big Bird, he's done—at least if Mitt Romney has his way (and it's about time!).During last night's debate, Romney expressed PBS is on the chopping block. “I’m sorry, Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. Actually, I like you too. But I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for us,” he said. Good for him. It's time to stop treating public broadcasting as if it were some sort of sacred cow; it's not. The left has already taken to the media to defend and make known that public broadcasting only costs tax payers a fraction of a percent compared to other programs (0.012%, or $444.1 million, to be exact).1 That's true, and I certainly hope Mitt understands that Big Bird does not make up the bulk of our deficit and over $16 trillion debt. He probably would have better used his time to focus his argument on entitlement spending (Social Security, Medicare, etc).
But, he is right. If one is going to take a principled approach to debt reduction, one must be willing to cut or phase out spending for all government departments and services that have nothing to do with protecting the individual rights of the people, and that includes funding to PBS. The fact that PBS is not as costly as other government programs is no justification to violate individual rights through coercive taxation. If the public finds it to be as crucial a national asset as many believe it is, then people will be willing to fund it voluntarily. Essentially, we ought to privatize Big Bird.
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