Among the 540 members of the 111th Congress, there are 24 health professionals, including 16 medical doctors.

However, you would be forgiven for mistaking House Republicans for professional proctologists, especially considering their latest “deficit-reducing” measures.

A few hundred people wearing their hind parts as hats is the simplest, most rational explanation we’re able to form regarding the GOP’s recent antics: a party line vote to cut all government funding, starting in 2013, to the Corporation For Public Broadcasting; a $531 million “savings.”

If that’s an organization that sounds intimately familiar to you, that’s because almost every break in PBS programming reminds its viewers that they’re watching the program, in part, thanks to the CPB, and viewers like you.

Can programs like NOVA, Sesame Street continue without government support?

Well, sure. The kind of people who listen to NPR are also the kind of people who wouldn’t mind paying to keep the service around. Disney has already acquired the rights to Jim Henson’s muppets, so an intellectual property such as “Sesame Street” — with ubiquitous parental approval and an entire generation of new parents raised on Big Bird, Snuffy, Bert and Ernie — would almost certainly find a home in the Magic Kingdom; hopefully somewhere far, far away from Miley Cyrus.

Our contention isn’t with where our dearly beloved childhood television would end up, but rather the idea of cutting the funds to begin with.

While stations in larger cities would almost surely be able to make ends meet with help from deep-pocketed viewers, it’s the local public TV and radio stations — 1,300 in all — that will be hit the hardest.

In Iowa, $3.9 million dollars was given by the CPB in 2010 to 10 PBS and NPR stations, padding budgets an average of 15 percent.

Almost 90 percent of Iowans view or listen to public television or radio each month.

Iowa Public Television broadcasts not only the content syndicated nationally on PBS stations, but programs esoterically Iowan. If someone asked us to take a stab at the percentage of farmers who use PBS or NPR for market prices, we’d go with somewhere between all of them and everybody.

There are three digital Iowa Public Television stations that broadcast to the Ames area on channels 11.1, 11.2 and 11.3, with programming that enlightens, enriches and educates.

Iowa Public Radio can be heard on WOI 90.1 FM or WOI 640 AM.

Now that the GOP’s circus has found its way to Washington, NPR and PBS’ days may be limited. Enjoy them while you can.