House Republicans announced today that they will force a floor vote to eliminate taxpayer-funded support for NPR in response to the firing of Juan Williams. A proposal to defund NPR was the winner in the GOP’s weekly “YouCut” contest, in which the public votes online for various spending cuts — GOP leaders have pledged to force votes on the winning items (so far nearly every such vote has failed to pass the Democratic-controlled House). House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia and Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado, who authored the proposal, announced the winner in a statement:
This week’s winning spending cut is a proposal developed by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) that would eliminate taxpayer funding for National Public Radio. When NPR executives made the decision to unfairly terminate Juan Williams and to then disparage him afterwards, the bias of their organization was exposed. Make no mistake, it is not the role of government to tell news organizations how to operate. What is avoidable, however, is providing taxpayer funds to news organizations that promote a partisan point of view. Eliminating taxpayer funding for NPR is precisely the kind of commonsense cut that we have to begin making if we want to fundamentally alter the way business is conducted in Washington.
Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring tells NRO the vote will likely happen tomorrow.