Senate Body OKs Arts Bill; Lean Years Still Loom

A Senate committee Wednesday threw a lifeline to the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities by approving a bill to keep the agencies afloat another five years. But a key Republican made it clear those would be lean years, predicting that the Senate would go along with the 40% cut in the endowments’ budget approved Tuesday by the House of Representatives.

Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), chairman of the Senate subcommittee that writes appropriations for the endowments, predicted that his panel would produce a bill with “roughly the same reduction--40%--that the House has come up with.”

That was a sobering assessment for endowment supporters who had hoped the Senate would be friendlier to their cause than the more-conservative House.

Indeed, the legislation approved Wednesday by the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee to keep the endowments alive was supported by a solidly bipartisan 12-4 margin. The bill, whose principal sponsors are Sen. James M. Jeffords (R-Vt.) and Labor Committee Chairman Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.), would extend the life of the agency through the year 2000, but would lower the ceiling on spending for the agencies by 5% a year.

The endowments’ future will be determined by two separate pieces of legislation--an authorizing bill that determines whether they live or die, and sets ceilings on spending, such as the Senate bill; and appropriations bills, which set actual spending levels year by year, such as the one passed by the House Tuesday.

“My primary concern has been, and continues to be, that the endowments exist--while perhaps in a new form,” Jeffords said.

By contrast, House GOP leaders are pushing legislation that would abolish the arts agency after two years and the humanities agency after three.

An appropriations bill approved by the House on Tuesday would provide $99.5 million for each endowment, down from this year’s spending of $162 million for the arts endowment and $172 million for the humanities endowment.

In predicting that the Senate Appropriations Committee would follow suit, Gorton said the Labor Committee bill to reauthorize the endowments promises far more money than will be delivered.

“To say we can go with a 5% reduction in the two national endowments is utterly unrealistic,” Gorton said.

Another member of the Labor Committee suggested that the bill might face a filibuster when it goes to the Senate floor later this year. Without further cuts, “it’s going to be very hard to get an authorization bill through the Senate without significant discussion, perhaps a filibuster,” said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.).

But the Labor Committee rejected, on a tie vote, an amendment to cut the endowments’ budget in half over five years. The amendment was rejected despite support from Kassebaum, who said it would “put us more in line with the reality of where we are today.”

The committee also rejected an amendment by Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) to abolish the agency after five years and transfer its functions to the private sector.

Proponents of the bill included new restrictions on the arts endowment in response to controversy that has periodically surfaced over grants for performers whose work deals with nudity, homosexuality, religion and other sensitive subjects. The bill would cut off grants to individual performers in all areas except literature. Gorton, calling those changes “a day late and a dollar short,” said the endowments would not be fighting for their lives today if they had moved more aggressively to respond to their critics years ago.