House Appropriations Rejects Bid to Give CPB $535 Million for FY28
The House Appropriations Committee voted 35-28 early Wednesday morning to advance the Labor, Health and Human Services Subcommittee’s FY 2026 funding bill after turning back Democrats’ bid to attach $535 million in advance CPB funding for FY 2028. The measure lacks language to restore any of the $1.1 billion in federal money for CPB that Congress clawed back in July via the 2025 Rescissions Act (see 2509030065). Meanwhile, House Appropriations appeared on track Wednesday afternoon to advance the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee’s FY26 bill, which would cut NTIA’s annual funding (see 2507150086). The panel was still considering amendments at our deadline.
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Late Tuesday night, House Appropriations voted 34-27, along party lines, against an amendment from Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, to allocate CPB advance funding for FY28. Pingree told Republicans who supported rescinding the CPB funding and “are regretting that vote, this is your chance [to] mend your ways.” Even “if you don’t always like every story on NPR or PBS … they provide an incredible service,” including transmitting emergency alerts. House Communications Subcommittee Democrats criticized Republicans on Tuesday for precipitating CPB’s defunding over its impact on public safety communications (see 2509090064).
House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and other Democrats uniformly backed Pingree’s amendment. DeLauro said her constituents “never mention wanting less educational television for their kids or less information about dangerous” weather. “Jeopardizing access to [those programs] does not create efficiency, nor does it help the American people,” she said. “And I would love for [Republicans] to demonstrate which of the programs that have been offensive or do not follow some policy that the administration may have come up with.”
Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., a Congressional Public Broadcasting Caucus co-chairman who opposed the Rescissions Act (see 2506130025), voted against the amendment, but “I think we can work in the future” to find a solution to provide funding directly to local broadcasters who were “collateral damage” in Republicans’ claims of pro-Democratic bias at NPR and PBS, he said. “I don’t think this dog has run its last lap, [because] there were discussions [amid the rescissions debate] that are still in the works” to reach a funding compromise before Congress enacts a final FY26 funding bill.
House LHHS Chairman Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., said he still supports “Alabama local television and radio stations, but objectionable and controversial programming has been produced by NPR and by PBS, and therefore the CPB should no longer be subsidized by the American taxpayer.” It also “makes no sense to fund these programs two years in advance,” he said. “No other program [gets that level of] advanced treatment.”
Rep. Mark Alford, R-Mo., acknowledged that NPR and PBS “produce quality programming, [but they] already rely heavily on private support [and should] not depend on taxpayer subsidies” anymore. “Their underwriting spots and sponsor messages often mimic ads … despite FCC rules requiring non-promotional content.” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in January asked the Enforcement and Media bureaus to investigate PBS and NPR member stations over possible underwriting violations (see 2501300065).
The House LHHS bill “misses an opportunity to extend a desperately needed lifeline to local public media stations that are devastated by” the rescission of CPB’s funding, America’s Public Television Stations CEO Kate Riley said. “Local stations have been forced to eliminate or reduce local programs," and the loss of funding "is already preventing stations from installing new transmitters and making desperately needed infrastructure investments in areas prone to severe weather.” The group urges Congress to “restore funding for local public broadcasting stations in the final” FY26 appropriations bill, she said.
House Appropriations’ Wednesday debate on the CJS FY26 bill didn’t mention NTIA, which would see its annual funding drop to $47 million. That mirrors President Donald Trump’s funding request but would be 20% less than NTIA got for FY 2024 and FY 2025 (see 2403040083). The House Appropriations CJS calls for giving the National Institute of Standards and Technology $1.28 billion, the Patent Office slightly less than $5 billion and the DOJ Antitrust Division $310 million.
DeLauro criticized the measure for not trying to end President Donald Trump’s freeze of “programs that provide seniors, veterans, rural families and people with disabilities with the skills and tools they need to access the internet.” In May, Trump blocked release of further Digital Equity Act funding from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (see 2505090051). His FY26 budget request proposed canceling $550 million allocated for the fifth year of digital equity funding (see 2506020056).
The CJS bill report includes language to bar NTIA from using the $42.5 billion BEAD program and other broadband initiatives to engage in rate regulation. House Appropriations approved a manager’s amendment to add language requiring that the agency “shall not approve” any BEAD recipient proposals “to require, encourage, or incentivize subgrantees to offer specific rates for broadband service, including a specific rate for a low-cost broadband service option.” NTIA’s broadband programs also “shall not provide a scoring advantage based specifically upon the form of organization or commercial status of a broadband service provider,” the report said.