Debt Commission:Less $ for UN,Defund NPR

Among the $200 billion in spending cuts recommended — when the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit commission dropped their draft proposal out of nowhere into an unsuspecting post-election political scene on Wednesday — are some very politically charged items.

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson proposed cutting the U.S. taxpayer’s contribution to the United Nations,an organization which many conservatives and moderates see as anti-U.S. and anti-Israel. The draft proposal recommends reducing the “voluntary” funds that taxpayers dish out to the U.N. each year on top of the dues that each country pays.

The U.S. in the 2009 fiscal year paid $2.7 billion in dues to the U.N.,and an additional $3.6 billion in voluntary funds. Bowles,a former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton,and Simpson,a former Republican senator from Wyoming,suggest cutting the voluntary funds by $300 million a year. It’s likely less than many would like to see that number cut,but it is a first hack at what many on the left and no doubt at the U.N. itself see as a sacred cow.

A spokesman for Obama’s ambassador to the U.N.,Secretary Susan Rice,did not return a request for comment.

Also included in the report is a recommendation to eliminate government funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,whose “primary job is to fund [National Public Radio] and its member stations … and PBS and its member stations.”

Coming on the heels of the recent uproar over NPR’s firing of Juan Williams for comments they deemed insensitive,and the threats by many Republicans to defund the station,this proposed cut is also significant. Though NPR does not depend in any way solely on CPB for funding,an elimination of CPB funding would nonetheless hurt NPR.
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