THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 16, 1995 TAG: 9505160001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
With Washington at last bent on cutting federal spending, curbing federal power and balancing the federal budget, the National Endowment for the Arts looks to be a dead duck.
Among a gush of bills aimed at doing in the controversial agency, Pennsylvania Republican Rep. William F. Goodling's apparently is the most merciful. The proposed Goodling legislation would chop NEA funding by 40 percent in fiscal 1996, 40 percent from the '96 funding level in fiscal 1997, and 20 percent from '97 funding in fiscal 1998.
Then it would be bye-bye, taxpayer-funded NEA. Congressman Goodling says his plan would buy time for the NEA to recreate itself as a wholly privately funded group.
NEA Chair Jane Alexander has been lobbying mightily to get NEA beneficiaries and friends of the arts to inundate Capitol Hill with pleas to keep the agency alive with tax money. She exhorts arts advocates to point out that arts organizations generate some 1.3 million jobs, $37 billion in spending and $3.5 billion in federal tax revenues, far more than the current NEA budget of $162.5 million. They are told to explain how the NEA's comparatively modest grants trigger far greater funding for the arts by state and local governments and private givers - corporate, individual and foundation.
Such arguments are familiar. The mining, timber, cattle and other industries use the economic argument to justify many-times-bigger federal subsidies to them. But the economic case cuts both ways. If the federal subsidies are small in the scheme of things, why are they necessary?
The NEA is also in trouble because (1) the Christian Coalition and the American Family Association have targeted it and (2) the populist spirit of the times objects to government spending on ``elitist'' causes.
Besides, the issue as posed - i.e., ``Why tax money for the arts when there isn't enough for programs to aid the needy and we must balance the federal budget?' - disadvantages the arts' supporters.
So the arts must continue to look even more to the private sector to keep them afloat. The foes of taxpayer funding are right when they argue that the private sector is sufficiently rich to foot the whole bill - that mega music and movie stars and executives could raise much of the cash required to create genuine national, state and local arts-and-cultural endowments. The challenge, yet to be taken up, is to enlist such celebrities in a high-profile effort to do exactly that. by CNB