House GOP Votes to Strip All Funding From the NEA

Continuing a determined assault to end federal spending for the arts, House Republicans voted Tuesday to strip all taxpayer funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Led by conservative opponents of the NEA, the 238-192 decision overruled strong objections by Democrats and the Clinton administration to pass a $13-billion Interior Department appropriations bill that--while funding several other federal agencies--would abolish the NEA.

The fate of the beleaguered arts agency now rests with the Senate and President Clinton.

Indeed, as the House was voting to zero-out the NEA’s money, a group of senators began working on plans to not only preserve the agency but increase its funding.

Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that sets NEA’s spending, said he wants to give the agency “a modest increase” in funding from its current $99.5-million annual budget. “I have polled the members of the subcommittee and I don’t find any sentiment on the committee to end the endowment,” Gorton said. “I think it’s much more likely than not that the agency will survive.”

Meanwhile, Sen. James M. Jeffords (R-Vt.) led a bipartisan contingent of senators by introducing legislation that would authorize funding for the NEA for five years. “Many of my colleagues in the House do not feel that there is a federal role for the arts, but I do not agree with that position,” Jeffords said in a statement released to coincide with the House vote.

White House officials have said Clinton will veto any legislation that eliminates federal support for the NEA. His budget request calls for a $136-million budget for the agency.

Right up to the vote, White House officials were making phone calls and “twisting arms” to persuade lawmakers to reject the Interior appropriations bill, according to one source on Capitol Hill.

“We are persuading people to vote against it,” White House spokesman Barry Toiv said, adding that lack of funding for the NEA was a major sticking point with Clinton.

The fate of the NEA was among several funding proposals contained in a massive spending bill, including funds to the Interior Department’s National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management; the Agriculture Department’s Forest Service; the Bureau of Indian Affairs and other federal agencies.

Two environmental issues became enmeshed in the legislation as it moved through House committees and then onto the floor. One would have replenished the Land and Water Conservation Fund, used to pay for federal purchases of environmentally sensitive acreage, and the other tackles the thorny issue of building roads in national forests.

About $700 million that the administration sought for the land fund--$250 million of which would have been used to purchase old-growth redwoods in the Headwaters Forest in Northern California--was knocked out of the measure in a procedural move before it reached the House floor. The legislation also included $65 million to buy land near Yellowstone National Park to protect it from mining.

Supporters expect that the money will be restored when the Senate Appropriations Committee takes up the spending measure.

By a wide measure, the GOP effort to end federal support of the NEA attracted the most debate and attention as the appropriations bill snaked through House panels to a floor vote. After the larger bill cleared the House Appropriations Committee in June, funding for the NEA was slashed to $10 million for fiscal year 1998, an amount that would have been just enough to cover the cost of closing the agency. A GOP compromise to replace the NEA with a block-grant scheme failed last week.

Cutting off federal support to the NEA has been a key goal of socially conservative GOP legislators.

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.