GOP to force vote on NPR defunding

House Republicans announced they plan to force a floor vote on defunding National Public Radio in response to the firing of analyst Juan Williams.

House Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Rep Doug Lamborn (R-CO) said that cutting funds to NPR was the winner of the conference's weekly "YouCut" contest, in which the public votes online on spending items they want eliminated.

"When NPR executives made the decision to unfairly terminate Juan Williams and to then disparage him afterwards, the bias of their organization was exposed," the two said. "Make no mistake, it is not the role of government to tell news organizations how to operate. What is avoidable, however, is providing taxpayer funds to news organizations that promote a partisan point of view. Eliminating taxpayer funding for NPR is precisely the kind of commonsense cut that we have to begin making if we want to fundamentally alter the way business is conducted in Washington."