The Corporation for Public Broadcasting's budget will likely survive the scare thrown into it by Operation Offset.
That was the proposal by Republican conservatives to pay for Hurricane Katrina through budget and program cuts, including a suggesting that CPB's budget could be on the block.
Mike Pence (R-In.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee that came up with Operation Offset, didn't entirely rule it out, but said Tuesday he didn't see zeroing out the CPB budget as part of the operation.
He couldn't rule it out because House Speaker Dennis Hastert has outlined a plan for general cuts that didn't specify just what would be on the block.
Pence reiterated what he saw as the need for cutting spending to pay for Katrina, saying he did not want the natural disaster to turn into a fiscal one--the goverment spent $60 billion in the first five days, he said--for the nation's children and grandchildren.
