GREAT FALLS — The Rescissions Act of 2025 could slash nearly 20% from Montana PBS's budget if signed by President Trump, threatening educational programming across the state.
Montana PBS estimates it would receive a $1.8 million budget cut under the Rescissions Act of 2025, which was presented to President Trump on Friday. This represents nearly a 20% direct cut to the program, but the impact could be more far-reaching.
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"That 20% could increase over the course of the next year as we start to understand the full impact of not having the Corporation for Public Broadcasting making those investments," said Aaron Pruitt, Director and General Manager of Montana PBS.
Pruitt warns that the cuts could affect programming from "Sesame Street" to Ken Burns documentaries, which promote learning for all ages.
"Nowhere else. No one else produces that kind of content," Pruitt said.
Montana PBS reaches more than 250,000 Montanans each week, with 30,000 of them being children.
"We think we've had a particularly important role in serving the public, with uninterrupted programming that is not commercially driven, that is not there to raise a certain amount of money. It is there to be simply public service programming," Pruitt said.
In a statement from July 17, U.S. Senator Steve Daines of Montana said, "Today I voted to reduce waste and fraud in several federal programs so that Montanans' taxpayer dollars are used effectively." Pruitt disagrees with the characterization of waste in public broadcasting.
"I think public television and PBS has been one of the most efficient private public partnerships you can imagine in this country, when we take $1.60 per American and we invest it and we invest it to leverage local support from communities across the nation to support their local public television station," Pruitt said.
Senator Daines shared more thoughts on the bill in a video posted to X last week, stating: "This bill cuts over $9 billion of wasteful spending from several federally funded government programs."
Pruitt encourages people to contact lawmakers to allocate funds for PBS in the fiscal year 2026 budget.
"We will be doing everything we can possibly do here at Montana PBS to try to preserve this service," Pruitt said.
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