NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE 7-14-95
News update: House plan will kill NEA in 1997; NEH fate still ???
By JERRY GRAY [excerpts]
WASHINGTON - Faced with a freshman-led mutiny, House Republican
leaders agreed Thursday to cut off all federal funding to the
National Endowment for the Arts within two years - a year earlier
than they had planned and five years ahead of the Senate's
schedule. The House, mired in a daylong debate over an $11.96
billion Interior Department appropriations bill for 1996, did not
reach a similar agreement to shorten the life of the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
But wending through the House of Representatives and toward likely
approval are two amendments that would set in law the 1997 deadline
for both the arts and humanities agencies. Another of the
conservatives' favorite cultural targets, the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting, is also in line for a phaseout of government
financing. An Appropriations subcommittee has approved a $240
million subsidy for 1996, a reduction from 1995 of $20 million, or
7.7 percent. While the cutback is far smaller than had originally
been threatened, the subcommittee has put the corporation too on
the road toward an end of all federal financing. A proposal to that
effect could come before the full House as early as next week.
The future of the endowments has become the focal point of the
debate over the Interior Department's appropriations bill. The bill
would cut financing for the endowments by 40 percent over their
current budgets - leaving arts and humanities each with $99.5
million for 1996, while heading them toward an end to all federal
monies.
The battle over the endowments opened with a curious skirmish.
Before debate can begin on a bill, lawmakers must first approve the
rules or guidelines under which the debate will proceed. With 232
Republicans in the 435-seat House, Republican leaders had expected
to push through the Interior bill over Democratic opposition, by
adopting a rule that would have limited both debate and the
opportunity for amendments to restore money for the endowments and
other programs.
But that plan fell apart late Wednesday night when dozens of
Republicans, most of them freshmen, joined Democrats to reject that
rule, 238- 177. While Democrats wanted the chance to put money in,
conservatives were angry that the rule would also have denied them
the chance to kill federal funding immediately for the arts and
humanities.
Bowing to those angry rumblings from the Republican freshmen, the
House leadership Thursday morning put forward a new rule, which was
approved by a 229-195 vote, that not only opened the floodgates for
dozens of amendments, but also included language that would end the
arts endowment funding in two years unless Congress later
authorizes new spending.
The original House legislation had specified three more years of
funding, and the Senate has indicated it would settle on seven
years. After losing on the first rule, House Republican leaders
suggested as a compromise phasing out the endowment subsidy over
five years. That idea was met this morning with swift and angry
rejection from conservative and mostly junior Republicans. t
doesn't demonstrate that we're moving toward the fiscal discipline
many of us came here to accomplish,'' said Rep. John Shadegg of
Arizona, a freshman Republican.
A majority of the cuts come from budgets for the arts and culture -
$72.6 million from the humanities endowment; $62.9 million from the
arts endowment; $12 million from the Smithsonian Institution, which
will receive $350 million; $7.7 million from the Institute of
Museum Services, which would leave it with $21 million; $6.9
million from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars,
which would receive $6.2 million. Only the National Holocaust
Museum, where the attendance is four times greater than projected,
received a major increase. The bill provided $28.7 million, $2.1
million more than in 1995 and the same as the president requested.
Conservatives have criticized the National Endowment for the Arts
for financing controversial, some say obscene, projects and have
charged that the National Endowment for the Humanities has favored
liberal causes in doling out money for media grants, museums, and
historical organizations.
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c.1995 N.Y. Times News Service. Fair use reprint for scholarly use
only. This is just an excerpt; for the full article, see New York
Times 7-14-95, p. 1.