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Floor Speech

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Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I want to join my colleagues in supporting the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I want to talk about two things: one, the people we represent and why it is so important that we maintain this service that is so essential to their well-being, and second, I want to speak about the institution we are part of and why it is an absolute betrayal of this institution's values and procedures to try to cut this program in this way and at this time.

I mean, first of all, all of us have public broadcasting in our communities. One of the biggest challenges, especially in our rural communities, is all the forces that are fraying the bonds that have been so central to the quality of life in those communities. It is our community hospitals that are under such financial stress. It is the lack of manufacturing that we are trying to have come back, where there are good jobs. It is the depopulation, where we can't get folks--there are not enough folks to serve in the volunteer fire departments.

These are real challenges to who I think all of us here who represent rural folks appreciate are really among the best folks we have in this Nation. You know, it is rural folks who sign up and enlist in the military at a far greater percentage than other parts of America, who pay the price of wars in Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever it may be that the Commander in Chief and Congress send them.

We have had a discussion in here that I do believe is bipartisan about the importance of strengthening rural America and how to do it. It is a topic of ongoing conversation, and it should be.

But one of the institutions that have served your constituents in Ohio very well--Senator Durbin's in Illinois, Senator Wyden's in Oregon, Senator Cantwell's in Washington, and my constituents in Vermont--is public broadcasting. It is the radio and the television.

One of the things that allow us to be united despite our differences is a shared understanding and knowledge of what is going on in our communities. That is what the news is about. It is not a propaganda machine. It is not advocating the point of view of the President or the point of view of the Senator from Vermont. It is giving information. At its most elemental level, it is giving dire information that is desperately needed when we have a natural disaster.

We in Vermont had a flood on this day in 2024. We had a flood on this day in 2023. The institution that was so essential to response, to information that was really vitally necessary, that allowed people to share the experience and figure out what to do, was Vermont Public.

It is important. It is not about politics; it is about the shared experience that people in a community need to have a sense of place to help them have confidence that they can count on one another, that they know where they live and they care about it.

So the question I have for us in respect to the responsibility that you have and I have to the people we represent is, when we know that there are these extraordinary, globalizing pressures, the demographic changes that are occurring in our communities that are weakening the bonds of brotherhood, why would we compromise an institution that has served so many so well for so long? That weakens that sense of community, so why would we do that? There is not a good reason that we would do that. There is not a budgetary reason why we would do that. This is $1.60. If we wipe out everything, it is about a buck-60 for every taxpayer in the country. Seriously? A cup of coffee? What does that cost? A cable TV subscription? What does that cost? And at what price?

That capacity to share information, to understand the experience, to appreciate the challenges that you face and your neighbors face--that is so essential for people to have the strength to carry on.

You know, Vermont Public started just around the time I went to Vermont, and it was on the third floor of an aging building, the Windsor Constitution House. It was started by five people who knew-- they just didn't know better. They thought they could start something that would last, and they had no reason to think that other than they knew it would be beneficial to the folks in their community.

Those five people who started from nothing included classical music but news right in the beginning, Vermont news. That has become a statewide news source that folks in Bennington, up to Derby Line, that folks working in the barns milking cows, that folks on the factory floor all have on as I visit them. And they might have FOX News on. They might have MSNBC on. But the news they all have on is Vermont Public. That has been so beneficial to Vermont.

By the way, these news deserts that are afflicting all of us--what has helped us so much is that many of these extraordinarily gifted reporters who care about a sense of place, who have been on community newspapers, have now become the talent that has created this extraordinary institution of Vermont Public--great reporting.

So in a democracy, we all know we need this, and it is not because it is going to be an agent for our point of view, but it is going to be a cohesive force in the community to help people figure out the path forward. We have to keep this.

You know, in Vermont, we have pretty generous folks. The drives that we have to raise money are pretty successful, and we get about 90 percent of our funding through that. That is a lot higher than most States. But the 10 percent we will lose will cost us about $4\1/2\ million. That is real money for us.

So I just ask myself the question, when I know that the things I am saying about our appreciation of people in rural communities are things that every single one of us, Republican and Democrat, knows is true, and every single one of us, Republican and Democrat, would assert that we want to strengthen those rural communities because we have direct experience with how powerful and wonderful the people in those communities are--they don't complain. They work hard. They face adversity. They somehow toggle it together when it is always tough to pay your bills at the end of the month. And then they have this one news source that helps them so much to be good neighbors to people they disagree with on many other things.

Now, Vermont public television has also been tremendous. Vermont Public is both public broadcasting and public radio. They work together. And how many of our kids benefited from the extraordinary programming that helped kids share the values that are independent of what your political point of view is, values like goodness, values like tolerance, values like acceptance. That is what the program is about. It is values, shared values.

You can be the most conservative person in the world; you can be the most liberal person in the world; you have no right to be disrespectful because you are ``right'' politically.

This is an institution that has served us well at very little expense. It would be heartbreaking for us in Vermont to see the U.S. Senate give the back of the hand to those folks who, over 50 years ago, were inspired by a commitment to their neighbors throughout the State of Vermont and tell them that we want to take away their funding.

The second point I want to make is about the institution we are part of. We passed a budget. We appropriated money for this. Fifty-three Republicans supported it, right? That was 3 months ago. What has changed? Nothing has changed. DOGE came. Trump came. They are looking for scalps. Cut funding. Get rid of USAID. But we as an institution have the power of the purse. We had a negotiation. We came to a mutual decision that spending public dollars on public broadcasting was a good thing, and that was a negotiated outcome that now is being torn up-- torn up.

So what does it do for the budgetary process where we have to go through a process that is extremely difficult because there are extremely different points of view about how best to spend money and where to spend it? But an institution can't survive if, at the end of that process, the agreement made becomes the agreement that is broken. It erodes trust. It demeans our institution. It makes weak the bonds of trust that we must have amongst us to come to resolutions and defend them and carry them out.

So we must not abandon the people we represent and the right they have to public broadcasting, and we cannot abandon the trust we must have in one another to keep our word. An agreement made must be an agreement kept.

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