Surprise From Congress: Hopeful Words for NEA

Jane Alexander found something in Congress Thursday for which her four years as chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts had not prepared her: a warm welcome from the House subcommittee that controls her agency’s purse strings.

It was less than two years ago that congressional Republicans, who had just gained control from the Democrats, slashed the NEA’s budget by 40% and informally agreed to eliminate it by the 1998 fiscal year.

Instead, Alexander went to Congress with a request for $136 million for fiscal 1998, which begins on Oct. 1--a hefty increase over the $99.5 million that Congress made available for the current year. And she came away with reason to hope that Congress might grant her wish.

Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on the Interior Department and related agencies, told Alexander that there was “lots of wiggle room” in the 1995 accord.

One day earlier, House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), one of the engineers of the plan to wipe out the endowment next year, had been quoted by Congressional Quarterly as conceding that he did not believe he had the votes to stick to that agreement.

Alexander told the appropriations subcommittee that her agency remained essential as a lever to pry money for the arts from private sources. “If the NEA didn’t exist,” she said, “you’d have to invent it.”

Support for this argument came from an unlikely source--Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.), a longtime critic of the arts endowment. Observing that private giving for the arts was declining in his hometown of Chattanooga, Wamp said the private sector seemed unlikely to step in and fill the gap if federal aid was eliminated.

Alexander told the appropriations subcommittee that the 40% cut in the NEA’s budget in fiscal 1996 had left the agency unable to approve the many worthy grant applications it receives each year.

“Many applications submitted by some of America’s finest arts institutions--large and small, in little towns and big cities--will necessarily be rejected,” she said. “That is a sad situation we face in our reduced funding state.”

Pointing out that the NEA accounts for less than $1 of every $10,000 spent by the federal government, Alexander said Congress needed to look elsewhere for the large savings it will need to balance the federal budget.

“As small as we are by government standards, we are still the largest single source of funding for the noncommercial arts in the country,” she said. “We are the engine that drives other public and private investment in the arts, and we are not a drain on the economy by any standard of measurement.”