Filanthropy Friday

The first Presidential debate was this week.  I didn't watch it.

However, I heard Gov. Romney provided some specifics on budget cuts that he would propose to help balance the budget; one of these cuts - to PBS.  

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 like you, too. But I’m not going to — I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. That’s number one.

I'm not sure (because I didn't watch the debate - so I don't have the context) if Mitt Romney's #1 priority is to cut funding from PBS or to stop borrowing money from China.  

I decided to do a little research to determine just HOW much money our government was bleeding due to (what I can only assume from attention Romney gave it) our massive PBS expenditure.

The first thing I learned is that PBS funding is actually funding for CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting)  and that's comprised of PBS and NPR (so it's not just Big Bird, Thomas the Train and Sherlock - it's also Morning Edition, This American Life and Radio Lab).

That being said, it's surprisingly difficult to find places that agree on numbers, but I found many sources that said $445 million is the federal allocation to CPB.  Sounds like a lot of money to me - but then I started looking at all the federal spending numbers I could find.

As it turns out, we spend a metric poop ton of  money - about $3.6 TRILLION in 2011.  This makes the CPB portion of our federal budget (and I had to use Excel for this because my calculator doesn't go to a trillion) about .012% of our budget.  That doesn't sound like much. 

Allow me to provide some context with other numbers (again, some might not be exact, I had to look in several places).  

• 663.7 BILLION - Defense  (not including Veterans Affairs) in 2011. 
• 2.4 BILLION - One (just 1, uno) B-2 Bomber (we have 20).
• 695 BILLION - Social Security in 2011.
• 164 BILLION - Interest on National Debt in 2011 (can we refinance and get some of the lower rates that I keep hearing about on Market Place?)
• 10.5 Billion - EPA in 2011.
• 517.5 MILLION - Amount of money the City of Austin spent to provide water to 212,000 people in 2011. 
• 318 MILLION - Congressional banana purchasing  in 2011. 

OK, so I might have made that last one up.  The point is - we spend A LOT of money.

Now, I understand that when trying to cut back - it's important to make cuts where cuts can be made and that every little bit helps.   I often evaluate our household budget, so I decided to look at what might equal .012% of our family's budget.  It's about equal to the amount of money I spend on dinners with Liz once a week or the amount of money Buttin spends on plastic bottles of Dr. Pepper.   It's not an insignificant amount of money - but it's not really going to help us save for Cash's college fund (unless he goes to Texas Tech - hee,hee) or pay off our house.  Even if we found 50 things where we spent .012% of our budget - that would still only amount to .62% of our budget (I think my math is correct). 

My point is  that at the rate Mitt Romney is cutting, he's going to have to find hundreds of little programs to cut to make any kind of dent in our deficit, and I'm sure there is a ton of waste that can and should be cut.  I'm just not sure if starting with PBS (actually CPB) should be #1 on the block. 

All this being said, I understand it is my personal duty as a citizen to pay and support the things I want.   In my research, I discovered that for every $1 CPB receives from the government, they actually raise $6 from viewers and listeners like me!  So this week, I donated $25 to my local PBS station (I've already donated money to NPR this year).   I grew up watching Big Bird and Mr. Rogers and The Electric Company  -  and even though Thomas the Train has got to be the most boring children's programming ever invented, my son loves it.  So, you're welcome Cash and Bird Bird and Elmo!