More generally, children's programming that has an audience does not need taxpayer subsidies. Noggin, which is more "commercial-free" than PBS stations, carries 12 hours of kids' shows (including two different versions of "Sesame Street") every day, and they are at least as good as the PBS offerings in terms of entertainment and educational value. Parent-acceptable children's programming can also be seen on Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel and ABC Family.

 Nonsubsidized competitors likewise offer programs for adults comparable to those carried by PBS and NPR, including news, documentaries, music, cooking shows and BBC series. That doesn't mean there's no place for the public stations; perhaps they do some of these things better, and there's always the argument that "not everyone subscribes to cable," as Markey noted (although more than 80 percent of U.S. households have cable or satellite TV, and only some of those that don't are going without it for financial reasons). But to the extent that the public stations' programming is valued, they should be able to attract enough private support to make up for the 15 percent of their budgets that comes from the government.

 Supporters of the subsidy make much of how little it amounts to -- "less than $2 per year per person," as Markey put it, for a program that Americans tell pollsters they consider one of the best uses of their tax dollars. But this argument cuts both ways: If the vast majority of us believe the money is well spent, shouldn't the stations be able to find plenty of donors who are willing to kick in substantially more than their $1.30 annual share as taxpayers? The very popularity that has repeatedly saved public broadcasting from federal funding cuts (and probably will again) suggests it would manage to survive despite them.

 Similarly, the argument that the funding cuts must be defeated to prevent political interference with programming has things backward. It's government funding that makes such interference inevitable. The best way to keep public broadcasting editorially independent is to make it financially independent.