Why Is Congress After NEA? It’s Simple : Commentary: The decimation of the arts agency is a political bone being thrown by Republicans to religious conservatives. Period.

The current Republican plan being advanced in Washington to demolish the National Endowment for the Arts goes like this: Slash next year’s budget by 40%, slash another 40% the following year and zero out the agency the year after that.

The numbers might change, but the intent is plain.

Opponents of the Draconian action have begun to marshal their forces, especially now that congressional hearings about the agency’s future are under way. The nagging question is this: Why does the escalating battle to save the NEA seem as if it’s being fought on the wrong field of combat?

Last week, NEA Chairman Jane Alexander held several days of meetings with arts constituents in Los Angeles, including an address Thursday evening to the organization Women in Film, at the Studio Theatre on the Paramount Pictures lot. During her stay, the discussion of the NEA crisis had a familiar focus, as it likely will on Wednesday, when Alexander is scheduled to appear before a Senate appropriations hearing.

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We heard, for the umpteenth time, about the importance of the federal arts agency in educating our children, bringing diverse communities together, expanding the American economy, sending a message of cultural sophistication to the international community and more.

We heard how the NEA touches lives in ways most Americans are wholly unaware of. We heard how an amount equivalent to the NEA’s annual $167-million budget is spent by the Pentagon every five hours.

Whatever one thinks of the merits of this litany for dealing head-on with the jeopardy the agency currently faces, it is in fact beside the point. So, let’s be clear about what’s actually going on.

The decimation of the NEA is a political bone that is being thrown to religious conservatives by the Republican majority in the 104th Congress. Period. End of sentence. End of paragraph.

Serious debates over the wisdom or efficacy of cultural funding miss the mark. It’s political pay-back time for the November election. No more, no less.

Let’s put it in biblical terms. The NEA is the head of John the Baptist, which will be served on a golden platter to that seductive Salome, Pat Robertson and his Christian Coalition, whose Nov. 8 snake-dance so charmed Republican Herods in Congress that they are lining up to grant the ruinous wish.

Polls show that a clear majority of Americans want the NEA. But, anyone who has watched the Christian Broadcasting Network (now called the Family Channel) has seen Robertson repeatedly demand an end to the agency. Such actions would conclude a relentless assault against the NEA begun in 1989 by the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the America Family Assn. Religious conservatives are about to prevail.

Here’s one telltale sign that politics, not principle, is what’s at issue: Despite repeated requests from Chairman Alexander, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has flatly refused to meet with her to discuss the agency’s fate.

I’m certain Gingrich’s calendar has been jampacked in recent months. But look at his refusal to meet with Alexander this way: The Speaker of the House is snubbing the federal government’s chief liaison to a $3-billion industry--the nonprofit arts industry--which generates $5.4 billion in taxes back to federal, state and local governments. Imagine that rebuff happening to another American industry of comparable size.

Whether or not the Christian Coalition can claim that kind of productivity, what Robertson and company provide is valuable in more telling ways. They produce religious conservatives in the voting booth, where last fall they helped put Republicans in the congressional driver’s seat for the first time in 40 years.

Some things are far more precious to politicians than securing the economic health of 1.3 million American workers, the number who toil in the nonprofit arts field. Keeping power is one of them.

Getting still more power is another. The 1996 presidential race is now under way, and Republicans want the White House. Eager candidates for the nomination pretty much agree that the party’s extreme right wing, a minority prominently featured on the podium at the 1992 convention in Houston, will be necessary to its delivery. So they’re ready to deal, in order to keep the extremists happy.

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Religious conservatives want a number of concessions from the 104th Congress, but certain of those will not be easy to grant. An end to a woman’s constitutionally protected right to choose abortion, for example, is presently beyond reach.

But the NEA? Piece o’ cake. That the cultural life of the nation can be casually consigned to the ash heap for reasons of political self-interest says a lot about the values held by the new Republican majority.

If the dilemma the NEA now faces is purely political, however, so is its solution. Given that reality, why isn’t Chairman Alexander mounting a sophisticated political offensive as she travels the country? Why doesn’t she articulate what’s actually going on, as the NEA faces the ax?

Simple. Because she can’t. The head of a federal agency is constrained by law from that sort of political call to arms. Alexander can only make a case for the significance of the NEA and the efficacy of its programs. She must fight this fight with one arm tied behind her back and a muzzle on her mouth.

The public, of course, has no such constraints. (Not yet, at least.) So, repeat after me: The NEA is a political bone that is being thrown to religious conservatives by the Republican majority in the 104th Congress. Period. End of sentence. End of story.