
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, August 10, 1995                   TAG: 9508100078
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

SENATE KEEPS, SHRINKS ENDOWMENT FOR ARTS

The Senate voted Wednesday to cut funding for the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities by about one-third, as it approved a $12.1 billion bill that would also slash spending for the Interior Department and American Indian programs.

The final vote on the bill was 92-6.

At the urging of Democrats and Republican moderates, the Senate restored some of the money for the arts and humanities that the House had cut, but that still left the endowments about 30 percent below current levels.

The cuts dashed some hopes that the Senate would be much more generous than the more-conservative House. Some art agency backers were pleased, though, that the Senate seemed less bent on outright abolition of the endowments.

``Today's vote was both a real and symbolic victory for the American people,'' said Jane Alexander, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. ``The tone and substance of the Senate debate were eloquent testaments to the valued role of arts in America.''

The final budget for the coming year will be settled in a House-Senate conference committee, which will meet to resolve differences between the two chambers' versions.

The endowment funding was a small part of an appropriation bill that would make a 9 percent cut in the budget of the Interior Department, which oversees the Bureau of Land Management, the National Fish and Wildlife Service and other resource management programs. The National Park Service budget would drop to $1.2 billion - down $100 million from this year.

``I feel like the Grinch,'' said Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., chairman of the subcommittee that drafted the bill. ``I'm here managing a bill in which almost every account gets less money than it does for the current year and the argument for each of the programs taken in isolation is, of course, a persuasive argument.''

Like the version of the bill passed by the House, the Senate measure also would continue a moratorium on offshore oil drilling in environmentally sensitive areas. The bill also included a one-year moratorium on designating any new species as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

The arts endowment provides grants to artists and cultural organizations such as traveling art shows and symphony orchestras. The humanities endowment provides grants for scholarly research, museum exhibits and the publishing of articles about translations of important works in the humanities field.

by CNB