NEA gets healthy boost in Bush's proposed budget

Fort Worth Star-Telegram ^ | Feb. 03, 2004 | MARIA RECIO

[yonif]

WASHINGTON - Just a few years after facing extinction, the National Endowment for the Arts got a healthy $18 million increase in President Bush's budget for fiscal year 2005, with an assist from first lady Laura Bush.

The arts agency, once the scourge of Republican lawmakers for funding controversial art projects, got a spike in funding to $139.4 million in the budget released this week, the largest increase since 1984.

[farmfriend]

Short list.

[KantianBurke]

The House cut the NEA to zero funding in 1997 but the Senate restored funding and imposed additional spending restrictions.

Those were the days......Hey Senate RINOS - KISS MY ASS!

[Meldrim]

Does anybody wonder why so many men (and women) of ability cheat on their taxes...

[COEXERJ145]

It is still very possible that the NEA will not get any of the proposed funding. Bush's budget is simply his plan for how the government should spend money. Congress will make the final decision. However, I'm sure it will be the usual budget that is bloated on pork.

[Lady Eileen]

The money is not the state's to give.

[Ben Ficklin]

"Those were the days"

I hate to tell you, but the voters canceled the "Contract with America".

[nathanbedford]

Stalin said that one man murdered was a tradegy but millions murdered was a statistic.

Ironically, this miserable, relatively tiny $18 million might just prove to be the kind of fatuous extravagance which crystalizes in the nation's mind Bush's shameless pandering in a way his squandering of hundreds of billions for aids in Africa, corporate farmers, grandpa Gates drug wants, the Teachers' unions, and etc, have failed to do because, in their very size, those give-aways are only a statistic.

[Charlotte Corday]

Wait till you see the tap dancing around here when GWB endorses reparations for slavery.

[ETERNAL WARMING]

Nothing hurts like funding the enemy. Does anyone doubt that's what they are?

[tubavil]

The NEA funds works like "Piss Christ" and george and laura give them a 15% raise in the worst economy in 20 years.

bush is handing the presidency, the country and our future to the 'rats, and he using our billions to do it.

Nothing is beyond this man now.

[E.G.C.]

bTTT!!!!!!

[Dane]

I guess a reformed NEA under Laura Bush is a bigger cultural threat than MTV to the "true conservatives".

[Dane]

The NEA funds works like "Piss Christ" and george and laura give them a 15% raise in the worst economy in 20 years

That was many years ago. Bush is doing a good job reforming the NEA. I guess MTV should be the American cultural icon to you.

[tubavil]

I hate to tell you, but MTV is the cultural icon of an entire generation! That's why it was in the middle of the superbowl, with 130 million (half our population) US viewers.