House Panel Scraps Bush Plan for NEA : Congress: Arts groups will now hammer out a compromise proposal on the agency.

The chairman of a subcommittee trying to extend the life of the National Endowment for the Arts discarded President Bush’s proposal on the issue Tuesday and, in effect, told a committee of arts groups he would introduce whatever they came up with as a substitute.

The novel approach by Rep. Pat Williams (D-Mont.) came as Williams convened an unusual meeting of representatives of 26 of the nation’s most influential arts organizations. The meeting was called by Williams last week in an effort to resolve the political crisis surrounding the funding of the NEA and the types of restrictions that may be placed on the agency’s grants.

But at a Capitol Hill press conference, Williams acknowledged what appeared to be a feeling in Congress: that the deepening divisions among politicians and the arts community over the NEA must be resolved soon if there is to be any federal support for arts programs.

“It’s my judgment that the majority of members of the House are eager to embrace an appropriate proposal for the resolution of this seemingly interminable issue,” Williams said.

Signaling the delicacy of the NEA’s political situation, however, other members of Congress said that they fear the Williams plan may prove a costly--and unsuccessful--gamble. Rep. Bob Carr (D-Mich.), chairman of the Congressional Arts Caucus, said that he has begun to try to assemble support for a legislative strategy proposed last year--but since abandoned--by Williams and other House members.

Under the Carr plan, the NEA reauthorization would be put off for a year, with the agency being funded under an appropriation bill written under the arts agency’s existing legislation. Carr said he thinks the plan may be the only workable option in an election year in which the heat of the NEA controversy has caused many of the agency’s most loyal congressional advocates to withdraw their support.

“It’s an election year and this is an important issue,” Carr said in an interview. “But I don’t get the sense, even among arts supporters, that there are a lot of people who are going to lay on the barbed wire for the National Endowment for the Arts this year.”

Williams last week formally introduced Bush’s proposal to reauthorize the arts endowment for another five years without restrictions on the kinds of artworks the agency can support. But he said in response to a reporter’s question that the growing fights over NEA financing along with divisions among arts supporters last week have produced “a crisis for the NEA.”

As a result, Williams said, he was abandoning the Bush bill, which had not even come up for hearings in the NEA reauthorization subcommittee Williams chairs, and was committing himself--sight unseen--to support an NEA bill incorporating whatever proposal emerges from the meeting of arts groups.

He acknowledged, however, that the tactic could blow up in his face--especially if arts supporters themselves are unable to reach a consensus. Last week, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, which represents state arts councils, proposed that their members get 60% of the NEA budget--triple the proportion they now receive. The furor over the plan deeply fragmented the traditionally solid arts lobby.

“This is not without risk,” Williams said of his plan--”high risk, indeed.” But, he said, the NEA may be effectively destroyed if the 14-month-old conflict is permitted to continue.

At the same time, Williams told arts supporters to forget about fashioning a legislative compromise plan they think may appease all political sides in Congress and produce a proposal that passes muster with the broadest majority in the arts community.

“It would be a mistake for this group (the special committee of arts organizations) to try to pre-guess what is likely to receive 51% of the votes in Congress, ditto it and hand it to us,” he said. “I am determined to introduce it, whatever it is.”