The Political Power of Public Broadcasting

The threat of major federal funding cuts to public broadcasting is now over, thanks to a 284-140 vote in the House restoring the funding. The big losers, instead, will be thinks like education (NCLB), rural health care, and low income schools.
It seems that Bush demanded a limit to spending this year, which requires freezing spending on many programs, but cutting it for some (the above mentioned). As much as the left screams when programs like this get cut, I wonder how much good they do for the dollar, and why the federal government has to be the one to tackle the problems.
It's like here in Oregon, when some legislators try to limit the budget to reasonable levels, those who support higher levels of spending fight back by threatening to cut vital programs, like chopping days off the school calendar, or taking out inner city hospices for mental patients, instead of actually trying to cut fat from the budget.

PBS got to keep it's 100 million, 4% of it's annual budget. I'm a big fan of PBS, mostly because I have kids, but I often enjoy the programming as well. As my wife and I decided years ago that we would never get cable, the only place to get nature shows and cultural programming (like ballet, yes I watched Swan Lake the other day, you got a problem with that?) is channel 10.
However, when you get Emails from friends passing on a MoveOn.org get-out-the-message and petition to save the funding, I almost have to root for the cut. I'm glad they retained their funding, but would like to see them get funding from other sources, so this kind of political wrangling doesn't need to happen.