Also, the subcommittee voted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides a portion of public broadcasters' funds, beginning with a 25 percent cut in CPB's budget for next year – from $400 million to $300 million.

On top of that, the House Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health and human services, and education cut $50 million that was supposed to go toward upgrading the network's aging satellite technology.

"Expressing alarm, public broadcasters and their supporters in Congress interpreted the move as an escalation of a Republican-led campaign against a perceived liberal bias in their programming," the Washington Post reported.

In fact, the CPB's own new chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, has readily admitted that public television has a liberal bias, stating, "I frankly feel at PBS headquarters there is a tone deafness to issues of tone and balance."

As NewsMax.com reported, Tomlinson insisted that CPB needs to take a more balanced approach to politics in order to attract a wider range of donors.

Nevertheless, Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said the Republicans "are trying to put their ideological stamp on public broadcasting."

But the subcommittee's Republican chairman, Rep. Ralph Regula of Ohio, said the cuts had nothing to do with dissatisfaction over public broadcasting.

"The thinking was, there's not enough money for everything," he said in an interview.

"There are 'must-do,' 'need-to-do' and 'nice-to-do' programs that we have to pay for. [Public broadcasting] is somewhere between a 'need-to-do' and a 'nice-to-do.'

"No one's out to get" public broadcasting, he said. "It’s not punitive in any way."

Regula said public stations could "make do" without taxpayer funds by getting more donations from private sources, including corporations and viewers.

The cuts in financing went significantly beyond those requested by the Bush administration and are likely to be approved by the House, according to the New York Times, although the House could restore the funding when it meets with the Senate on budget legislation later this year.

Small public radio stations in rural areas are expected to be particularly hard hit if the spending cuts are approved because they're already operating on very tight budgets.

"This could literally put us out of business," Paul Stankavich, president of the Alaska Public Radio Network, an alliance of 26 stations in the state, told the Post.

"Almost all of us are down to the bone right now."

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