With a late-night vote in Congress to cut PBS and NPR funding, Mitt Romney‘s vision has come to pass. During a 2012 presidential debate, the GOP nominee famously pledged to “stop the subsidy to PBS” even though he liked Sesame Street character Big Bird.

Roughly $1.1 billion of the targeted cut would defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the non-profit that supports NPR and PBS.

FAILED APPEAL: One local conservative guest columnist appealed to Congress to save funding for public broadcasting. Oklahoma's statewide PBS station, OETA, reinforced that we are all fellow Americans and patriots before we are members of a particular partisan club, Garrett T. King wrote in May.

Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins joined Senate Democrats in opposition to Republican cuts to organizations like PBS and NPR, and the smaller stations that they fund. While PBS and NPR would still continue at the national level, the cuts would likely devastate those local stations that rely on them.

When Sesame Street debuted 50 years ago, it was a game-changer for children's TV, with a multicultural cast and some wildly funny Muppets.