Congress is moving to sharply reduce — and perhaps, eventually eliminate — funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In other words, less funds for Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow and other programs that are paid for, at least in part, by your taxes.
I'll probably find myself on the opposite side to many of my friends on this, but I don't think this is a bad thing. The motives behind the cuts may be nasty — an ongoing Conservative drive to silence reporting that does not, by default, skew in their favor — but that doesn't mean there aren't good reasons for the cuts. I've always been uncomfy with the notion that "funding for the arts" is a legitimate function of government. I want there to be arts, of course, just as I want there to be a lot of things that I don't think should be underwritten with tax dollars.
But I also want the arts to be free of political pressure and I don't know that that's ever possible when they're underwritten with public money. I recall tuning in C-Span one day years ago and seeing Jesse Helms and an equally-insufferable Democrat debating the merits of some piece of statuary which had been paid for with federal funding. Helms thought it was obscene, the Democrat thought it wasn't, and my reaction was that these two men should not be having this discussion on the floor of the Senate. "The arts" should not be at the mercy of any politician's tastes or value system, and the sooner they're freed from that, the better.