Panel Approves $98 Million for NEA’s Survival

In a sharp rebuke to conservatives who led a determined effort to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts, congressional conferees agreed Tuesday to preserve the agency’s taxpayer support.

A House-Senate conference committee voted unanimously to provide the NEA with a 1998 budget totaling $98 million, only a slight reduction from its current funding of about $99.5 million.

The issue was assigned to a conference committee after the House and Senate took sharply divergent positions on the issue of funding for the endowment. Many conservative lawmakers regard the NEA as a waste of taxpayer money and have accused the organization of underwriting immoral and political expression under the guise of artistic freedom.

In July, a conservative faction in the House passed legislation--by a single vote--to eliminate all federal funds for the NEA. But the Senate opted to give the NEA $100 million during the 1998 fiscal year, which begins today. The differences between the two measures were ironed out Tuesday as part of the House-Senate conference over a $13.8-billion Interior Department spending bill that includes the NEA budget.

In addition to preserving federal funding, the conferees thwarted efforts to severely restrict how the 32-year-old endowment can use its federal money. Some arts supporters had expressed alarm that congressional leaders would fund the endowment but cripple it by allotting the NEA budget in block grants to the states.

Administration officials had urged President Clinton, a major advocate of public support for the arts, to veto the entire Interior Department spending package if Congress included too many restrictions on NEA funding.

Those fears proved unfounded and agency officials and supporters expressed relief at having dodged a potentially fatal bullet.

“We consider this a victory,” said Nina Ozlu, spokeswoman for Americans for the Arts in Washington. “The budget is $98 million more than what the House voted. The House had made an absolute commitment to kill this agency and it’s going to continue standing with only a 1.5% cutback.”

NEA Chairwoman Jane Alexander said in a statement that the conferees “affirmed the crucial role of the NEA in the lives of American citizens. I believe we have turned a corner.”

The conferees spent little more than half an hour debating the NEA issue, attaching only token strings to funding of the endowment. For example, the conferees readily embraced a Senate proposal that encourages arts groups to accept and solicit funds from sources other than the federal government.

The committee also accepted a House proposal to earmark 40% of NEA funds to be used as block grants, a slight increase over the current 35% allotment. Those grants must contain “educational components” and would be open to amateur arts groups and not exclusively to professional dance troupes or theaters.

Another new condition of NEA funding is the addition of six congressional leaders--three each from the House and Senate--to the NEA’s governing council.

“We have conditioned the grants that they have to open to a much broader audience for that purpose,” said Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), a member of the House Appropriations Committee and one of the conferees. “Basically, these are designed to have us involved in the process and to do a lot better outreach with NEA funds.”

Even ardent opponents of public support of the NEA hailed the conference agreement as a fair compromise.

“It sounds like a fairer distribution of funds and it’s better than what we have now,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), a strong and vocal critic of the NEA. “However, I still think that, if Hollywood [figures] would dig just a short distance into their pockets, we wouldn’t have to reach so deeply into the pockets of American workers.”

NEA critics contended that the endowment engages in elitist and regional favoritism for states like California and New York, which, they say, have received disproportionally large grant funding at the expense of smaller states. While the conference committee put a 15% cap on the share of funding that any one state can receive, it exempted arts programs that travel beyond state lines.

Nearly one-quarter of the endowment’s $81 million in grants last year went to New York, where much of the nation’s arts community is based. Some of the money sent to New York-based concerns was distributed to smaller arts projects around the nation.

California, which received 10% of the endowment’s grants last year, is unlikely to experience any major funding cuts or restrictions. State NEA officials used the California funds on a variety of projects.