Mitt Romney says he wants Sesame Street to start running advertisements

If Mitt Romney has his way, Big Bird would be pitching McDonald's during Sesame Street Mitt Romney yesterday, asked by Radio Iowa's O. Kay Henderson to identify a specific spending cut he'd make to reduce the deficit:

There are programs that I like, like PBS'I mean, my grandkids watch PBS, they like to watch Sesame Street. You know, I just don't think we can afford to borrow money from China to pay for things we absolutely don't have to do. So in the case of PBS, I'd tell them to get advertisers or more contributors, but the government is not going to pick up the bill by borrowing money.

This isn't a new position for Mitt Romney'he said nearly the exact same thing last December:

"We're not going to kill Big Bird," Romney said. "But Big Bird is going to have advertisements. Alright?"

I'm sure parents will absolutely love having their kids get bombarded with McDonald's and Fruit Loops and Oreos ads during Sesame Street. That's a small price to pay for eliminating a 0.01 percent chunk of the federal budget. Well, actually less than that, because while public broadcasting overall gets roughly $445 million, that's split among NPR, PBS, local affiliates, and programs like Sesame Street.

But hey, at least Mitt Romney is getting specific about his deficit plan. Of course, given that it would eliminate less than one tenth of one percent of the deficit, it's not that impressive a plan.