Republicans Howard Coble, Renee Ellmers, Virginia Foxx, Walter Jones, Patrick McHenry and Sue Myrick voted for the measure.
Democrats G.K. Butterfield, Larry Kissell, Mike McIntyre, Brad Miller, David Price, Heath Shuler and Mel Watt voted against it.
WASHINGTON The House voted Thursday to end federal funding for NPR. Republican supporters said it made good fiscal sense, and Democratic opponents called it an ideological attack that would deprive local stations of access to programs such as "Car Talk" and "All Things Considered."
The bill, passed 228-192 along mainly partisan lines, would bar federal funding of NPR and prohibit local public stations from using federal money to pay NPR dues and buy its programs. The prospects of support in the Democratic-controlled Senate are slim. Seven Republicans broke ranks to vote against the bill.
NPR received almost $5 million in federal funding in fiscal 2010. In that year its revenues also included $2.8 million in dues and $63 million in programming fees from local stations, its largest single source of revenue. Under the bill, stations would still be allowed to buy NPR programs using private funds and use federal funds to produce their own programs.
"It is time for American citizens to stop funding an organization that can stand on its own feet," said Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., the sponsor. It was not a question of content, he said, which many conservatives say has a liberal bias, but of whether taxpayer dollars should go to nonessential services. "As a country we no longer have this luxury."
Other Republicans also denied that the measure was a vendetta, although NPR left itself open to conservative attacks last week when an executive, talking to conservative activists posing as members of a fake Muslim group, was caught on camera deriding the tea party movement and saying NPR would be better off without federal funding. Both the executive and NPR's president resigned after the incident.
Democrats said the legislation would do nothing to reduce the deficit and would be a blow to local public stations that rely on the national programs that include "Morning Edition" and "Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me" to attract listeners.
"This bill would pull the plug," said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. "It would snuff out stations from coast to coast, many in rural areas where the public radio station is the primary source of news."
The White House said it "strongly opposed" the bill and voiced similar objections, saying "undercutting funding for these radio stations, notably ones in rural areas where such outlets are already scarce, would result in communities losing valuable programming, and some stations could be forced to shut down altogether."
The move to curtail federal subsidies for NPR follows a House vote last month, as part of the GOP plan to cut federal spending for the remainder of this budget year, to take back some $86 million budgeted for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the parent organization of NPR.
That proposal, which also faces opposition in the Senate, eliminates $430 million in planned future spending for CPB.
In fiscal 2009 and 2010 the CPB distributed federal grant money to more than 600 public radio stations, which used that money to buy programs and pay dues to NPR.