During a House Rules Committee hearing, Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) spoke about President Trump's rescissions request.
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00:00Cost of living.
00:01Thank you, Ms. Leisure-Fernandes.
00:03Mr. Griffith, you're recognized.
00:05Thank you, Madam Chair.
00:07You know, Madam Chair, I'm listening to the discussion,
00:11and I hear our colleagues saying that this rescission package is merely a molecule
00:16in the makeup of federal spending.
00:20And then I wonder why they spent so much time attacking the molecule.
00:26Hmm. I think thou dost protest too much.
00:36It's my time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, or Mr. Rankin, remember?
00:39But I like to get through my stuff, and then if you want to say something,
00:41I might be willing to yield, but I like to get through my stuff.
00:46And so, you know, it's just kind of interesting.
00:49Let me also say that I agree with Mr. Scott when he says that what the USAID's mission was
00:55and what I understood it to be for most of my life, I support.
01:01I was on a trip a couple of years ago, went to a refugee camp in Africa,
01:07learned all about this peanut butter stuff that they helped to create
01:11and helped to spread around, that if you can get this stuff,
01:14it comes in kind of a squeeze tube.
01:16And the stuff is incredible.
01:20And if you can get that to a child before their organs start shutting down, they live.
01:25And it doesn't take much time.
01:27It's amazing stuff.
01:28That's what I support.
01:30I support the USAID doing that.
01:33And since this controversy came up where it was clear that at least a significant portion of their money,
01:38I don't know how much, but more than a molecule, Madam Chair,
01:41was being spent on culture wars.
01:45And I don't think USAID is supposed to be involved in the culture wars on the right or the left.
01:49It doesn't matter to me whether it's coming from the right or the left.
01:51It's not our job to go in there and do that.
01:53Our purpose, as I understood their mission, Madam Chair, was to feed the little children
01:59and to do what they could do to make a hunger less.
02:05And so I agree that it needs to be reorganized.
02:08I agree it needs to be revamped, and I think that the U.S. government,
02:12no matter what the agency is called in the future,
02:14needs to get back to the mission of making sure we're taking care of feeding those children.
02:18And when I talk to my constituents in the district about this,
02:22many of whom would tell you, because it's a relatively poor district,
02:25that they don't understand federal spending in foreign governments and so forth.
02:32They don't understand that.
02:33But when I talk to them about the peanut butter stuff, to a person, they nod and they go,
02:39yeah, I'm okay with that.
02:40I'm okay with that.
02:42So we may have to do some reorganization, but I just want to make it clear that I do support that
02:47because I'm going to talk about some other things.
02:48So, Madam Chair, I'm going to ask us to reflect back in time.
02:54The year is 2002.
02:55It's a tough time in the economy in Virginia.
03:02I was in the state legislature.
03:05We were facing a $2 billion shortfall.
03:09Legislature was out of session, and Virginia has a requirement to have a balanced budget.
03:14So the governor stepped in with the red pen and made cuts.
03:19That's what adults in leadership do.
03:22He cut 1,800 state jobs.
03:24Cuts were expected to cut up to 4,000 jobs at the state's universities and colleges.
03:30Community services were cut.
03:33Libraries were cut.
03:34Almost everything was on the table, including cultural items.
03:40One such program that was cut at the Library of Virginia, and which was one of my all-time favorites, Madam Chair,
03:49was the Virginia Cavalcade magazine.
03:51This is a part of my collection.
03:55They stopped publication in 2002 because the Commonwealth of Virginia could no longer afford it.
04:00And when I went and got my collection, I was just thrilled that the one that was on top was of the Little League game played in Norton in 1951,
04:10the first Little League game in the South, and it's fascinating to me because times change.
04:17People would think that the people of the mountains were racist, but in reality, it was the Charlottesville team that refused to let the integrated team play on their field,
04:27so they had to play the game in Norton in southwest Virginia, in the mountains, in Appalachia.
04:33But this, by its own definition, it was the quarterly illustrated magazine of Virginia history and culture, and it did all kinds of things.
04:41It did art.
04:42This is a big article on an artist from southwest Virginia named Walter Viggs.
04:49This was about the Powhatans, and on and on.
04:52And it was a marvelous publication, but the governor had to cut.
04:55He did what he had to do.
04:56While there was angst, there was angst about a number of the cuts that had to be made.
05:02The governor did what he had to do, and as a result, a lot of things got cut.
05:09And then Governor Mark Warner, now senator in the United States Senate from Virginia, made those cuts because that's what adult leadership does.
05:16Sometimes when you're facing a deficit and a debt, a debt of almost $37 trillion, you have to figure out what can we cut?
05:29What can we cut?
05:32And so I would ask my colleague from Alabama, because I've heard all kinds of things, the rescission bill is not the reconciliation bill, is it?
05:43In fact, the rescission bill is a bill to cut spending.
05:48Isn't that correct?
05:49Correct.
05:50And I would say I've heard lots of stuff here today.
05:53In fact, we finished with, you know, I forget whether it was killing, whacking, cutting off at the knees, Big Bird.
06:01What's fascinating is, let's get the facts straight.
06:05The rescission does not touch Big Bird.
06:08It touches the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
06:12It has always perplexed me, and this has been my position since the 90s when I first started studying this stuff.
06:18Why in the world the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS never got, and they may have changed something recently, but to my knowledge, they have never gotten, and historically, they didn't get any royalties from the corporation that owns Big Bird.
06:37They've never gotten any royalties, nothing, from Jim Henson Productions.
06:43Oh, they may pay for a particular show, they may, you know, but the corporation owns all of those intellectual properties, and so when they do toys, dolls, talking Elmo, when they do movies, and I heard today about spinoff TV shows, and if they're airing reruns, Corporation for Public Broadcasting gets nothing.
07:07And I understand that in the 1960s, that was fairly standard for television networks, but the production companies like Desilu, Viacom, Paramount, that would be the owners of the Star Trek merchandising and broadcasting rights, now partners with CBS, but all of that, they've made billions.
07:36And these corporations have made billions, and I don't understand why, because those television stations got the benefit of having the non-public television stations got advertising dollars, but why they didn't ask for that has always been perplexing to me.
07:54So, let's get our facts straight, everybody.
07:58This is not going to have a huge impact on Big Bird, because Big Bird's going to go somewhere else.
08:04Big Bird can go elsewhere, particularly if they, and they may have a contract for now, but they can go elsewhere.
08:11Jim Henson originally worked for Jimmy Dean, and I got a story on that, but I won't tell today.
08:16But he originally worked for Jimmy Dean.
08:18He was willing to give up some rights.
08:21We know that because he offered part of his corporation when he got the call to do work for PBS on the company that was going to do Sesame Street.
08:32He offered Jimmy Dean part of his company, and they could have gotten a piece of it, and they didn't.
08:37And that's always perplexed me, because then they wouldn't need to keep coming back to the government to ask for money.
08:42But Big Bird, Ernie, Cookie Monster, none of those are owned by PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or PBS.
08:55Now, it was a different world back in 1967.
08:58I mean, you had local calls.
09:03Today, we would call local calls.
09:04I mean, today, you can call the world pretty much local.
09:07But as late as 1993, to call inside of Roanoke County on telephones, you had to pay a toll.
09:22In the Virginia House of Delegates, I had to have special phones so people, my constituents, could call me without having to pay a toll,
09:28even though I only represented Montgomery County, Roanoke County, and the city of Salem,
09:33which is completely surrounded by Roanoke County and the city of Roanoke, and there was toll calls.
09:39The world has changed, and it really bothers me that everybody thinks that somehow that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
09:47doesn't have to change with the times.
09:51When they were created for television, we only got two channels at my house.
09:59We didn't have a big, giant TV, and we weren't in the right spot to get ABC.
10:02We only got CBS and NBC.
10:04So PBS made sense to get some additional broadcasting.
10:09Today, everybody has access, some even free over the air, but to hundreds of channels.
10:16And so things need to change.
10:18And I've said this since the 90s.
10:20Now, NPR, the public radio local affiliates, a little bit different.
10:25I recognize that.
10:26But they're a little bit different than the other, and I've long wanted to be helpful and supportive where I could to help them.
10:36But unfortunately, they're tied together.
10:38And maybe someday there'll be a bill or something that separates them out, and we can get that straightened out a little bit.
10:45But I have been confused here today, and maybe things are different in other parts of the country.
10:49Because they don't do local news.
10:53They do regional news.
10:55They do state news.
10:56And they carry some national news that they get from various sources.
11:00But they don't carry local news.
11:04My district's 9,000-plus square miles.
11:07We've got basically two different networks of affiliate national radio programs.
11:15They can't do local news in every one of the communities that they're serving, so they do regional and state news.
11:21They don't do local news.
11:23And that's been talked about today.
11:26And I'm just not sure that it's certainly not accurate in my district.
11:29I can't speak to others and to what they do.
11:34But, you know, they're all over the place.
11:41And then we get to the emergency broadcast system, as we used to call it.
11:46It may be the emergency alert system now.
11:48I don't know.
11:49But, Mr. Chairman, that's not a part of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
11:54That's a completely separate agency, is it not, or a separate entity, is it not?
11:57That's my understanding, yes.
11:58Yeah, and so when you talk about the warnings for tornadoes and for storms, I'm not saying they don't carry some of that on the local national public radio affiliates.
12:10But that's not who you listen to.
12:12Because if you're listening to that for half my district, you're listening to what's going on in Roanoke.
12:16That's not you.
12:18That's not about half my district.
12:20You know, up in the Appalachian Mountains and on the plateau, it's not them.
12:28And likewise, a lot of the programming in deep southwest comes out of Tennessee.
12:33It might be similar in some ways.
12:34They might say, hey, watch out in certain counties.
12:36I get that.
12:37But if you're in my home district, you're paying attention to your local TV station or you're listening to your local AM, now with an FM transponder that gets it into FM,
12:52because they're going to zero in on a specific county.
12:55In fact, I got one of my counties where there's a mountain in between.
12:58You got one radio station on one side of the mountain and another radio station on the other side of the mountain.
13:02And you better be listening, because when the flood is hitting, you know, a specific area like Haysi, you better be on the right radio station,
13:14because if you're listening to the other one, they're not going to have any flood at all on that side of the mountain.
13:17And all the water is on this side of the mountain.
13:20And so I've been a little perplexed by this wailing and gnashing of teeth claiming that somehow we were going to have all these storms that people weren't going to know about,
13:27because if we relied on – and I'm not picking on the local affiliates of the public radio.
13:32I'm just saying that's not their role in our region.
13:35I can't speak for other regions of the country, but I've got to believe in large rural districts, it's pretty much the same as mine.
13:41That's what I believe.
13:43And so I think that doing these rescissions is appropriate.
13:47I support it.
13:49And I just want to make – I mean, we can have disagreements.
13:53That's what we do in Congress.
13:54We have disagreements.
13:55We fight it out.
13:56But let's get the facts right.
13:58Corporation for Public Broadcasting is not the emergency broadcast system that we all grew up with, maybe now the emergency alert system.
14:04Big Bird is not owned by PBS.
14:07Burt and Ernie are not owned by PBS.
14:10Jim Henson Productions is a separate entity.
14:12It's not owned by the production company for Sesame Street or PBS.
14:16And so when you talk about we're going to be kneecapping Big Bird, I submit we might be setting Big Bird free.
14:23Big Bird might make more money being set free to go into the private market area whenever their contract is up with PBS
14:30and may be able to get more money nationally and internationally when they are set free.
14:39But that's a contract negotiation.
14:41It has nothing to do with this rescissions bill.
14:43And loving Big Bird and Bird and Ernie and loving the story of the original Jim Henson Productions
14:51and how they got started on the Jimmy Dean show.
14:53He was originally a country music star, for those who don't know, and then took his money and went in his sausage.
14:59But he didn't take Jim Henson's money because, as I was telling you the other day, Madam Chair,
15:03he said to Jim Henson something along the lines of, son, that's your talent.
15:08I don't want any of your company.
15:10God gave you that talent.
15:12Go out and have success.
15:14But he got his start.
15:15Henson got his start on the Jimmy Dean show.
15:18So there's a...
15:20Oh, by the way.
15:20And by the way, Jim Henson's show was not on PBS.
15:24I know you're going to be shocked, Madam Chair.
15:26Jim Henson...
15:27I mean, excuse me.
15:27Jim Henson's show on which he was...
15:29The Jimmy Dean show was a syndicated show on corporation for-profit television stations
15:37that used to run on Saturdays or Sundays, depending on what channel you were watching it on.
15:42I know the chair...
15:43I know you're sensitive to the time.
15:44I just wanted to flag that...
15:46I know that's something you've been concerned about at the...
15:48All right.
15:48I yield back.
15:53Gentleman said I talked too long, so I yield back.
15:55With the gentleman, this is about the peanut butter issue that you said, because we're
16:00in agreement.
16:01That's called RUTF.
16:03It is the ready-to-use therapeutic food, and you're right.
16:07You do that, and you can save a child's life.
16:10But that is all part of the International Disaster Assistance, in which $500 million is
16:16being cut.
16:16Law is supportive.
16:18We're on the same channel, RUTF, which is produced in Georgia with the peanuts, and in
16:24Rhode Island, and a company called Adesia, and it is in a number of other states.
16:29So it is a homegrown American product, which is useful in terms of saving youngsters' lives.
16:36Thank you very much.
16:38I yield.
16:38Can you yield back?
16:39I yielded.
16:40I yielded.
16:40Mr. Newland, you are recognized.
16:42That's why...