Posted on 01/28/2004 8:29:35 PM PST by yonif
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."
Impressive, considering that he's been dead since 1989.
Clean livin my friend..
Clean livin.
*On the other hand maybe not, my father has been dead for 30 years and yet manages to vote straight democrat in every election.
The problem is that the handouts are given AT ALL.
Robbing one man of his money to give to another... is evil.
No amount of conditional discrimination can make it good.
Forgive me for jumping in here, but Bush IS NOT keeping us free.
The terrorists do not want to enslave us. They want to destroy us. That's all the terrorists can do. There isn't a force in the world that can enslave us except our own government and only if continue to allow it. Rather than keeping us free, Bush is enslaving us with higher taxes that will result from his massive spending increases, bigger government, and more restrictions on our liberty in the name of fighting terrorism.
I do respect that you and others place it as your number one priority. I don't think either party will lower our national security as another 9/11 would eliminate their party in the next election.
I'm willing to put up with another democrat if meant another Ronald Reagan down the road - I lived through JFK and LBJ (which were worse than Bill Clinton), Carter, and Clinton.
The people at the top only care about elections, and right now it's in their best interest to appeal to people on both sides of the fence, through all these little programs and expenditures. They may not be on the scale of JFK/LBJ, but they are just as harmful, as they are harder to reverse down the road.
We need less government, not more, and we can maintain our current level of national security (as weak as it may be) and still work towards less government.
By "deal with them"... you mean EXPAND them.
(because that is what he proposed)
Not only that, they don't have to kill many Americans to destroy us.
They just have to create enough fear in enough Americans, and the statists in the government will take that fear and use it to send us further down the road to a police state. At that point, the USA is utterly destroyed.
The democrats came dangerously close after 9/11 to really getting the ball to rolling (all those proposals and soundbites that I heard from them scared the hell out of me). Stalin (and Hitler) both preyed upon the fear and anger of the people and came up with a democrat's dream nation - government regulation of anything and everything.
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