Bush Is Said to Seek More Money for Arts [$15 million to $20 million for NEA]

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 — President Bush will seek a big increase in the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts, the largest single source of support for the arts in the United States, administration officials said on Wednesday.

The proposal is part of a turnaround for the agency, which was once fighting for its life, attacked by some Republicans as a threat to the nation's moral standards.

Laura Bush plans to announce the request on Thursday, in remarks intended to show the administration's commitment to the arts, aides said.

Administration officials, including White House budget experts, said that Mr. Bush would propose an increase of $15 million to $20 million for the coming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. That would be the largest rise in two decades and far more than the most recent increases, about $500,000 for 2003 and $5 million for this year.

The agency has a budget of $121 million this year, 31 percent lower than its peak of $176 million in 1992. After Republicans gained control of Congress in 1995, they cut the agency's budget to slightly less than $100 million, and the budget was essentially flat for five years.

In an e-mail message inviting arts advocates to a news briefing with Mrs. Bush, Dana Gioia, the poet who is chairman of the endowment, says, "You will be present for an important day in N.E.A. history."

Mr. Gioia (pronounced JOY-uh) has tried to move beyond the culture wars that swirled around the agency for years. He has nurtured support among influential members of Congress, including conservative Republicans like Representatives Charles H. Taylor and Sue Myrick of North Carolina. He has held workshops around the country to explain how local arts organizations can apply for assistance.

Public support for the arts was hotly debated in the 1990's. Conservatives complained that the agency was financing obscene or sacrilegious works by artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano. Former Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, repeatedly tried to eliminate the agency.

Some new money sought by Mr. Bush would expand initiatives with broad bipartisan support, like performances of Shakespeare's plays and "Jazz Masters" concert tours.

Mrs. Bush also plans to introduce a new initiative, "American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius." This would combine art presentations — from painting and literature to music and dance — with education programs. The program would give large numbers of students around the country a chance to see exhibitions and performances.

New York receives a large share of the endowment's grants. But under federal law, the agency also gives priority to projects that cater to "underserved populations," including members of minority groups in urban neighborhoods with high poverty rates.

The president's proposal faces an uncertain future at a time of large budget deficits.

Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, an advocacy group, said, "We'll be fighting tooth and nail for the increase."

Some conservatives, like Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, vowed to oppose the increase. Even without support from the government, he said, "art would thrive in America."

Representative Louise M. Slaughter, a New York Democrat who is co-chairwoman of the Congressional Arts Caucus, said she was delighted to learn of Mr. Bush's proposal.

"There's nothing in the world that helps economic development more than arts programs," Ms. Slaughter said. "It was foolish for Congress to choke them and starve them. We should cherish the people who can tell us who we are, where we came from and where we hope to go."

Mr. Tancredo expressed dismay. "We are looking at record deficit and potential cuts in all kinds of programs," he said. "How can I tell constituents that I'll take money away from them to pay for somebody else's idea of good art? I have no more right to do that than to finance somebody else's ideas about religion."

The agency has long had support from some Republicans, like Representatives Christopher Shays of Connecticut and Jim Leach of Iowa.

"Government involvement is designed to take the arts from the grand citadel of the privileged and bring them to the public at large," Mr. Leach said. "This democratization of the arts ennobles the American experience."

I'm not sure the truth matters to some of these people, windchime.

What I'd like to see is an acknowledgement from those who said that this proved that President Bush wasn't a MORAL leader because of this, that they were wrong.

It won't happen. It takes maturity to admit you were dead wrong...... and there wasn't a whole lot of that going on on this thread........

Rush Limbaugh-

Who Needs the NEA?

January 29, 2004

I'm getting a lot of calls on Bush's proposal to spend up to $20 million of taxpayer money on the NEA. This is something that outrages Bush's conservative, smaller-government base - especially when we have a projected budget deficit of $520 billion.

You can hear me analyze Roger Kimball's National Review Online column "Farewell Mapplethorpe, Hello Shakespeare - the NEA the W Way." Kimball is managing editor of the New Criterion and author of "Art's Prospect." He writes that the NEA's new chairman, poet and critic Dana Gioia, has transformed the Mapplethorpe-era organization "into a vibrant force for the preservation and transmission of artistic culture." Kimball gushes:

"People keep telling us — that is, professors and CNN commentators and Hollywood actors keep telling us — how very stupid President Bush is. Yet everywhere one looks he is supporting some of the most intelligent and dynamic people ever to occupy their cultural posts.... The left keeps screaming about how dim George Bush is, but in the meantime he's illuminated one area of public life after another with these immensely talented and articulate people."

Well, good, then they don't need to take money from other Americans! This reminds me of the argument over funding the Kansas City Symphony when I lived there. There were all these fund-raisers, and when people didn't open their wallets at them, the symphony demanded that the government force them to pony up the dough. I mean, nobody wanted the symphony, okay? Yet some people insisted the government fund the thing! I just don't understand this line of thinking. A lot of conservatives feel the same way, and they're none too happy with Bush these days.

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