Senate Approves Cutting Funds to Arts, Humanities

The Senate voted Wednesday to cut funding for the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities by about one-third, as it approved a $12.1-billion bill that would also slash spending for the Interior Department and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The final vote on the bill was 92-6, with California Democratic Sens. Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer both voting for passage.

At the urging of Democrats and Republican moderates, the Senate restored some of the money for the arts and humanities that had been cut by the House. But that still left the endowments with an austere budget--about 30% below current levels.

Approval of the cuts dashed the hopes of some endowment supporters that the Senate would be much more generous than the more conservative House. But other agency backers were pleased that the Senate was less bent on outright abolition of the endowments.

“Today’s vote was both a real and symbolic victory for the American people,” said Jane Alexander, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “The tone and substance of the Senate debate were eloquent testaments to the valued role of arts in America.”

The endowments’ final budget for the coming year will be settled in a House-Senate conference committee, which will meet to resolve differences between the two chambers’ versions of the bill.

The endowment funding was a small part of a much bigger appropriations bill that would make a 9% cut in the budget of the Interior Department, which oversees the Bureau of Land Management, the National Fish and Wildlife Service and other resource management programs. The National Park Service budget would drop to $1.2 billion--down $100 million from this year.

“I feel like the Grinch,” said Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that drafted the bill. “I’m here managing a bill in which almost every account gets less money than it does for the current year and the argument for each of the programs taken in isolation is, of course, a persuasive argument.”

Like the version of the bill passed by the House, the Senate measure also would continue a moratorium on offshore oil drilling in environmentally sensitive areas. The bill also included a one-year moratorium on designating additional species as protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The arts endowment provides grants to artists and cultural organizations across the country for such enterprises as traveling art shows and symphony orchestras. The humanities endowment provides grants for scholarly research, museum exhibits and the publishing of articles about translations of important works in the humanities field.

As approved by the Senate, the appropriations bill would reduce the endowments’ funding to $110 million each--down from the $162 million provided for the NEA and the $172 million provided for the NEH this year.

Although the arts and humanities endowments accounted for only a small fraction of the bill’s price tag, it was a focus of political attention because the arts endowment has been under fire for years for supporting artists that critics consider offensive.

For example, some grant money went to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which last year became involved in a controversy because an artist with an HIV infection cut himself and then held his bloodstained paper towel over an audience during a performance there.

When Republicans won control of Congress last year, conservative members saw it as a golden opportunity to abolish the endowments. The House this spring voted to cut the endowments’ budgets by 40%, and GOP leaders there have endorsed plans to kill the arts endowment in two years and the humanities endowment in three.

The Senate, however, has signaled its willingness to keep the endowments alive--albeit at reduced levels. During debate on the appropriations bill Wednesday, the Senate approved an amendment by Sen. James M. Jeffords (R-Vt.) that boosted spending over the levels recommended by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“This amendment recognizes a substantial cut but it states that the Senate wants to continue the National Endowment for the Arts,” said Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Ida.).

“Some have said this will be a trophy on the wall for Congress to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). “But they are not going to do that.”

Jeffords said he wanted to make sure the endowments continue despite the reduced funding. “We’d all like to have more money, but having had a similar crisis occur 14 years ago . . . we survived and we survived with about half the funding.”

Support for the additional money for the arts funding was so broad that Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) did not offer his annual amendment to abolish the endowments.

Senator after senator got up and spoke in support of arts funding, but made clear that they wanted the endowment to steer clear of the controversies of the past.

“Taxpayers have been required to fund offensive art,” said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.). “But is the answer to do away with the American commitment to our culture? Absolutely not.”

In a bid to assuage some of the endowments’ critics, the bill would abolish most grants to individual artists, and instead channel most of the money through cultural institutions. Jeffords said he was not happy with that limitation but that it was necessary to gain support for the additional funding.

While cutting the endowments, the Senate bill would provide slight increases for other cultural institutions, including the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Institution.

In other areas, the bill would also cut funding for Native American programs by about 8%, including a 27% cut in aid to tribal governments, an action that drew heavy fire from some western senators.

“This amounts to economic termination of Indian self-determination,” said Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), who offered an amendment to restore most of the tribal government funding. The amendment was defeated on a 36-61 vote. “Nothing [else] in the Department of Interior gets close to a 27% cut.” Both Feinstein and Boxer voted against the amendment.