Big Bird, NPR receive $445 million; Military death gratuity slashed in shutdown

Brett T. | 11:06 PM on October 08, 2013

Reason Obama gives money to PBS & Big Bird & not vet funerals is because they have something in common. Yellow stripe down their backs. POS

— ⭐Sir Joe Guybee⭐ (@JGuybee) October 9, 2013

While the families of five fallen troops wait to hear if they’ll be able to attend the funerals due to the government shutdown, 2012 campaign staple Big Bird and his friends at Public Broadcasting were counting $445 million in taxpayer money, granted the first day of the government shutdown.

CNS News reports:

On the first day of the “shutdown” of the federal government, when members of the U.S. Senate were going to the well of their house to point out that the shutdown would prevent the National Institutes of Health from starting clinical trials for cancer patients and others facing possibly terminal illnesses, the administration was giving $445,000,000 to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, according to the Daily Treasury Statement.

That means PBS NewsHour, National Public Radio and Sesame Street got a taxpayer subsidy during the shutdown, but not would-be cancer patients at the NIH.