It is of course correct that PBS constitutes a tiny share of federal expenditures. But is the share too large?

I grew up on Seasame Street. (Though Big Bird wasn't my favorite.) I watch Charlie Rose. I like NOVA, and I watch the PBS Newshour quite regularly. PBS even helped cultivate my love of Mr. Bruce Springsteen and his mighty E Street Band by airing their old concerts.

But as a nation we must confront the cold, hard reality of our fiscal situation. For a long time it was believed that the government could provide guns and butter, but that providing more of one meant providing less of the other. In the parlance of economists, government maximized subject to constraints. Well, over the last decade or so we have paid a lot less attention to living within our means. At the end of the 2002 fiscal year public debt was about one third of GDP-today it is close to 75 percent. For the past four years the government of the United States spent one trillion dollars more than it took in.

Read the full argument on US News and World Report Debate Club.

Michael R. Strain is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.