House Votes to Freeze Arts Endowment Funds; Obscene Poetry Cited
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WASHINGTON — The House voted Wednesday night to freeze next year’s budget for the National Endowment for the Arts at 1985 levels after Republicans, led by Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, said that the organization’s grants were being used to subsidize pornographic poetry.
DeLay distributed among his colleagues and reporters samples of the writings of what he called “obscene poets” who used four-letter words and had received endowment grants.
“Tax money should not be going to finance these smut poets,” DeLay said before the House agreed by voice vote to hold the endowment budget to its 1985 level of $163.6 million, plus $3 million for public broadcasting.
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