"Give us a quiet room, copies of the spending bills, a box of red pencils, and watch what happens."

That's the preface, written by one "Consituent from New Mexico," to the Republican Study Committee's report (PDF) for "Operation Offset," the program through which the GOP is slashing spending in order to facilitate the reconstruction costs in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (and likely, as becomes more menacingly clear by the minute, Hurricane Rita). The list of targets for trimming include all the traditional GOP bêtes noires, including the arts, which are afforded special hostility:

Eliminate Funding for the National Endowment of the Arts
The NEA funds art programs and initiatives through grants to various entities. In 2001, America spent $27 billion on non-profit arts funding: $11.5 billion from the private sector; $14 billion in earned income (ticket sales, etc.); and $1.3 billion in combined federal, state, and local public support (of which $105 million was from the NEA (0.39% of total non-profit arts funding)). The funding could easily be funded by private donations. Savings: $1.8 billion over ten years ($678 million over five years)

Eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities [sic]
The NEH funds humanities programs and initiatives through grants to various entities. As with the NEA, the general public benefits very little from NEA [sic], and it could easily be funded by private donations. Savings: $2 billion over ten years ($769 million over five years) [bold emphasis mine]

Approval or disapproval of government spending on art should be immaterial here: Gulf Coast arts institutions have been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. A major cultural capital was virtually destroyed—its restoration will require real spending on art sites, art institutions, and artists, no?

Why not mandate that federal dollars dog-eared for NEA and NEH be redirected toward Gulf Coast arts restoration projects for the next few years? If the idea is to rebuild New Orleans, this work must be done anyway, insofar as you want a N'awleans and not a Shreveport. If the idea is to rebuild New Orleans as a much better city, greater effort should be made to bring some equity to the quality of life of the artists who add so much value to the city. A federal priority to restore New Oreans must include spending on culture.

Does anyone doubt that by "the general public benefits very little" the RSC means "Piss Christ, Piss Christ, Piss Christ"? You can review recent NEA grants by three categories (excellence fellowships [1], infrastructure partnerships [2], and Challenge America grants [3]) by state, and I think you'd be hard pressed to say that Texans and Louisianans aren't benefitting from NEA projects in their respective states. Take a look: Texas (1, 2, 3); Louisiana (1, 2, 3). The irritating myth that the NEA funds decadence and deviance really must be stopped before conservatives muck up the very programs that their own constituents highly value but cannot realistically subsidize.

We can go line by line through those items: It won't be the NYC gallery crowd who suffers when Brownfield, TX, loses the Rialto Brownfield Bluegrass Festival. At the same time, the whole nation benefits from San Antonio's ArtPace artist residency program. I don't see so much fat to trim here, and I'm sure I'll be far less convinced once the damage from Katrina and Rita has been tallied.

MORE: I don't think that the art funding cuts represent the most egregious elements of the RSC's plan. The fact that these cuts 1) affect local institutions that will need more money, not no money, from government cultural funding organizations, 2) seemingly aim to eliminate the cultural arm of the federal government, and 3) were written with real venom strike me as deserving attention. The Medicare/Medicaid cuts—amounting to half a trillion dollars—is more or less an act of class warfare, and probably ought to come first on the list of things that make you go hmmm.

Posted by Kriston at September 22, 2005 12:06 PM