Mitt Romney Wants To Fire Big Bird

Poor Big Bird. He just got Bain-ed by Mitt Romney:

I'm sorry, Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually like you, too. But I'm not going to—I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. That’s number one.

But PBS isn’t some drag on the economy. In fact, federal funding provided to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting helps to support more than 21,000 American jobs at 1,300 local radio and television stations around the country. It actually contributes more than $1 billion to the national economy.

More than 600 CWA members are among the people who work at CPB, PBS and NPR.

As Bill Clinton would say, it’s arithmetic.