[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 13 (Monday, January 23, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1299-S1302]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


           NATIONAL FOUNDATION ON THE ARTS AND THE HUMANITIES

  Mr. PELL. Mr. President, this year marks the 30 year anniversary of 
the establishment of the National Foundation on the Arts and the 
Humanities. In 1965 Senator Jacob Javits and I sponsored this 
legislation to foster the development of excellence in American art and 
culture. After a long and distinguished history of nurturing the arts 
in our Nation, the National Endowment for the Arts has in recent years 
become the subject of some controversy concerning the funding of 
certain works which many of our citizens consider offensive. In light 
of this, I would like to explain why I believe that the National 
Endowment for the Arts has been a tremendous boon to our Nation and 
should continue as a viable entity for the support of American culture.
  Our Nation's Arts Endowment provides critical assistance for cultural 
works and presentations in music, theater, literature, dance, design 
arts, and folk arts around the country. This year, in my own State of 
Rhode Island, the Endowment provided funds to renovate painting and 
sculpture facilities in the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of 
Design, supported an after-school arts education program for minority 
neighborhood youth in the fourth and fifth grades, and funded the 
Trinity Repertory Theater, one of the Nation's premier theaters. In 
other areas, the NEA funded a Music in our Schools program in 
Providence and aided a folk arts apprenticeship program. Without this 
funding, Mr. President, many of these programs would simply not exist. 
In this context, I ask unanimous consent that these editorials from the 
Providence Journal and others from around the country in support of the 
National Endowment be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [From the Providence Journal, Jan. 15, 1995]

                            We Need the NEA

       The Newt Congress has cast a cold eye on the National 
     Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency that provides 
     grants to arts organizations and individual artists.
       As federal budget items go, the NEA is no behemoth. Its 
     allotment this year is $167.4 million, nearly $3 million less 
     than the endowment had to work with a year ago, and an annual 
     outlay of roughly 65 cents for every man, woman and child in 
     America. (When was the last time you could get into 
     [[Page S1300]] even a neighborhood puppet show at that 
     price?) Compared with governments in most Western European 
     nations, ours expends a pittance on art. And the NEA budget 
     is dwarfed by the $9 billion Americans give privately to the 
     arts each year.
       Yet despite its modest draw on federal revenues, the NEA 
     has for some time been a favorite target of some 
     conservatives, who like to focus on the few projects they 
     consider obscene, and an offense to family values, while 
     ignoring the much greater sums that help keep small 
     orchestras, ballet troupes and less controversial artists 
     going.
       In Rhode Island, $829,700 in NEA money went to 15 artists 
     and arts groups in the fiscal year that ended last September. 
     The bulk went to the Rhode Island Council on the Arts, which 
     distributes support to a variety of projects. Other stipends 
     went to four individual artists (in visual arts, dance, 
     literature and translation), and to such groups as the Rhode 
     Island Philharmonic, Trinity Repertory Theater, RISD, Brown 
     and the Langston Hughes Center for the Arts.
       Massachusetts, during the same cycle, garnered 153 grants 
     worth $4.9 million.
       A legitimate philosophical question lies beneath the often 
     vituperative attacks on the NEA. That is, should the federal 
     government play any role at all--however small--in supporting 
     the arts? In an era of deficits and taxpayer discontent, the 
     question has new urgency. Certainly no program should be 
     shielded from a rigorous appraisal of cost-effectiveness; and 
     all agencies must share in overdue federal fiscal discipline.
       In the 1960s, when the NEA was conceived, the rationale 
     seemed simple. Most popular forms of entertainment (movies; 
     TV; recordings) paid for themselves. But what about the 
     artistic and cultural experiences that many people had less 
     contact with?
       Who would make opera accessible to more than just the 
     wealthy; assure that painters received training and a chance 
     to paint; and help keep classical musicians playing? The 
     government saw a role for itself in nourishing work that 
     might not instantly withstand the judgment of the marketplace 
     but might enrich culture over time.
       Minus certain Cold War distortions, the rationale for 
     subsidizing the arts was little different from that for 
     supporting academic and scientific research. Not every 
     American should have to agree with the worth of each 
     individual project; it was the idea that the general category 
     was a good to an advanced society.
       But why not imply turn all of this over to the private 
     sector--nonprofit institutions supported by business and 
     individuals? First, such institutions are simply not equipped 
     now to shoulder what for them would be such a heavy transfer 
     of obligation. Many arts organizations would be left 
     foundering during the interim. Additionally, federal arts 
     dollars function as seed money, attracting extra financing 
     from local governments and the private sector. The federal 
     imprimatur lends legitimacy, and helps to guide private 
     involvement. As a result, it is easier for artists and arts 
     groups to raise the money they need than if they had to 
     appeal solely to the private sector.
       But finally, a federal arts program has important symbolic 
     value. Merely by existing, it makes a statement about what we 
     as a nation vlaue--in this case, something beyond getting and 
     spending. If values truly are the fundamental crisis in this 
     country, as conservatives suggest, eliminating the NEA would 
     send exactly the wrong message. Congress should spare it.
                                                                    ____

                [From The New York Times, Jan. 13, 1995]

                    Don't Ax Federal Support for Art

       The National Endowment for the Arts, now in its 30th year, 
     has been a brilliant though sometimes controversial success. 
     At a modest cost to the taxpayers, $167 million this year, it 
     has helped channel private donations to an impressive variety 
     of nonprofit arts institutions across the country. 
     Institutions report that each dollar granted by the Endowment 
     generates an average of $11 in matching private funds. As a 
     result, many more Americans have been able to experience 
     original art firsthand, and talented artists have been 
     encouraged to pursue their work.
       This is just what the Endowment was created to do. But now, 
     for a variety of reasons, some conservative Republicans want 
     to use their new Congressional majorities to cut off funds 
     for the Endowment and shut it down. They should not be 
     allowed to succeed.
       The Endowment has some devoted conservative Republican 
     defenders, for example Senators Orrin Hatch and Alan Simpson. 
     But other conservatives remain ideologically opposed to 
     public subsidies for the arts. Yet subsidies by governments 
     and wealthy patrons are an ancient and necessary tradition. 
     Even artists whose greatness has been acknowledged by 
     posterity have had to struggle to support themselves during 
     their lifetimes, particularly if their originality consisted 
     in challenging received tastes. Enlightened societies all 
     over the world recognize that there is a clear public 
     interest in supporting such talents and to sustaining the 
     traditions represented by an museums, libraries, symphonies 
     and dance, opera and theatrical companies and making them 
     available to wider audiences.
       This is a wise and historically validated role for 
     governments. The real risk of government subsidies lies not 
     in overgenerous use of the taxpayers' money but in the the 
     potential for political interference or censorship. The 
     Endowment's designers wisely guarded against this danger by 
     leaving initial grant-making decisions to panels of people 
     knowledgeable about the arts. The awards are then subject to 
     two higher levels of expert review. Most grants are awarded 
     not to individual artists or productions but to institutions 
     with a good track record. But a good track record in the arts 
     includes a willingness to take the occasional risks on a 
     promising new or controversial talent.
       It is these risks that have gotten the Endowment in trouble 
     with demagogic politicians like Jesse Helms who will seize on 
     provocative aspects of particular exhibits or performances 
     put on by institutions receiving some Endowment support to 
     caricature the whole of the Endowment's work. The most recent 
     controversy, for example, centered on a bloodied paper towel 
     flung by a performance artist, Ron Athey, at the Walker Arts 
     Center in Minneapolis. The Endowment had awarded some 
     $100,000 to the Walker to help support its entire season. The 
     Walker in turn awarded about $150 of this money to Mr. Athey.
       Not all great art is controversial and not all 
     controversial art is great. But themes like eroticism, 
     homosexuality and the provocative use of religious imagery 
     that so upset the Endowment's critics have been entwined with 
     great art for centuries. In recent years, the Endowment has 
     tried to play it safe on these issues to appease its 
     Congressional critics. But excessive caution shortchanges an 
     important part of the Endowment's mission.
       The zealous and small-minded are always willing to attack 
     art and artists. But there is no reason to elevate their 
     attacks to general Government policy. To do so would be a 
     distortion of the mandate of the November election. To be 
     blunt about it, prominent New York Republicans with ties to 
     the city's extraordinary cultural institutions have an 
     obligation to see that their more rambunctious members of 
     Congress do not destroy the National Endowment for the Arts.
                                                                    ____

              [From the Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 13, 1995]

                Maintain Subsidies To Support the Arts.

       American voters say they want a leaner, more effective 
     government. And like most federal programs, the National 
     Endowment for the Arts could survive with less. But it would 
     be a mistake to eliminate the NEA and its $167 million 
     budget.
       Attacking the NEA has become good symbolism for political 
     conservatives. They believe the federal government has no 
     business subsidizing the arts and they object to the choices 
     the NEA makes in choosing which artists to subsidize.
       We disagree on both counts. In our view, government can 
     play a legitimate role in subsidizing the arts, and political 
     disagreement over which artists to subsidize is both 
     inevitable and worth it.
       By any definition, the arts are important to the nation's 
     quality of life. There is no evidence that self-interested 
     consumers, corporations and foundations can adequately meet 
     funding needs.
       Since the NEA was founded in 1965, grants have been awarded 
     to traditional as well as avant-garde artists. These grants 
     often serve as vital seed money for artists, projects and 
     arts organizations. For every $1 individual artists and 
     groups get from the NEA another $11 in private donations is 
     raised.
       The arts also have positive economic impact. Museums, art 
     galleries and theaters attract tourists and conventions. On 
     an annual basis, the arts generate $37 billion in revenues, 
     employ 1.3 million people and pay $3.4 billion in various 
     taxes.
       Eliminating federal subsidies also would cripple state and 
     local arts programs which get 35 percent of their funds from 
     the NEA. The Illinois Arts Council for example, will get 
     $896,000 or 11.7 percent of its $7.6 million budget, from the 
     NEA.
       The world would not come to an end if the NEA were 
     eliminated. But all that would be satisfied are the political 
     aims of today's congressional leadership. In the real world, 
     the federal government is running an annual budget deficit of 
     $203 billion. Cutting $167 million for the arts would do much 
     more harm than good.
                                                                    ____

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 13, 1995]

                    Shunning the Yahoo Point of View

                          (By Raymond Sokolov)

       As the new Congress starts to debate whether to zero out 
     the pitifully small ($176 million) budget of the National 
     Endowment for the Arts, everyone should take a look at the 
     section of ``Gulliver's Travels'' where Gulliver visits the 
     Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos. The Houyhnhnms are equine 
     intellectuals, the Yahoos hairy, uncouth louts in human form. 
     In our day, while the cultivated Houyhnhnms whinny and prance 
     in futile protest, we are well on the road to becoming a 
     nation of Yahoos.
       Christina Jeffrey's appointment as historian of the House 
     of Representatives was a warning. Speaker Gingrich was 
     rewarding her because in 1993 she had supported his attempt 
     to keep his course at Georgia's Kennesaw State College alive 
     while other faculty there were protesting it as improperly 
     contaminated with politics. But Ms. Jeffrey, an associate 
     professor of political science, was not just a complaisant 
     right-winger at a Podunk college. She was already on record 
     in 
     [[Page S1301]] 1986 denouncing a federal history program 
     about genocide because it did not include the Nazi point of 
     view on the Holocaust. When this statement resurfaced a few 
     days ago, Speaker Gingrich said he hadn't connected Ms. 
     Jeffrey with its author because she had used her maiden name 
     back then (before he met her). So, to stem the tidal wave of 
     furious public outrage, he up and canned the lady.
       This flaplet raises several interesting questions, but the 
     most interesting is, What kind of intellectual milieu could 
     bring Speaker Gingrich and Ms. Jeffrey into contact as 
     historians?
       Wishing to believe in the good faith of all parties, I 
     accept that the speaker did not know about the Nazi memo, 
     that he agrees with the angry protesters, and that the 
     intellectual milieu in Georgia where this odd couple found 
     common cause is exactly the kind of unenlightened backwater 
     in which the Holocaust can be blithely dismissed by a 
     professional historian as a subject primarily of interest for 
     religious discussion (as Ms. Jeffrey argued to the federal 
     government).
       Anyone who thinks that way is an unreconstructed anti-
     Semite, of course, but, worse still, such a person has 
     managed to remain completely untouched by the over-whelming 
     facts of history as they have been documented, discussed and 
     accepted by historians and others in the overwhelming 
     majority of mainstream America and the rest of the world. It 
     is one thing to hate Jews. Any moral dwarf can do that. But 
     it takes an especially ignorant and fact-resistant sort of 
     historian to believe that there is a viable Nazi point of 
     view on the subject.
       But let's stop for a moment and try to take Ms. Jeffrey 
     seriously. What would the Nazi point of view on the Holocaust 
     be? Why obviously it would be a positive point of view. 
     Unlike most of us who think the sadistic incineration of six 
     million people because they had at least one Jewish 
     grandparent was among the great crimes of history, the Nazis 
     believed it was a great and necessary achievement. The Nazi 
     point of view must have been that annihilating Jews was a 
     social good for Nazi Germany and the world. And, on 
     reflection, I agree with Ms. Jeffrey that any good course on 
     the dynamics of genocide would have to include this point of 
     view, expressed as vividly as possible with documents and 
     photographs. This is actually the approach that the Holocaust 
     Museum on the Mall in Washington takes, and it is an 
     extremely effective method of discrediting the Nazi point of 
     view.
       The trouble with Ms. Jeffrey's point of view about the Nazi 
     point of view is that she thinks the Nazi point of view has 
     real merit worth airing in a classroom. Ms. Jeffrey has 
     obviously not considered the unusual facts of the Nazi 
     record, or she wasn't interested in them. She is therefore a 
     historian outside history. She is a Yahoo.
       Does that sound like the harrumph of a member of the 
     cultural elite? I certainly hope so, because I think that the 
     Jeffrey affair obliges people committed to the preservation 
     of our heritage to defend the idea of cultural elitism 
     against the Yahoos. If we who speak for culture retreat from 
     the fray now, we really are an effete corps of impudent 
     snobs, in Spiro Agnew's immortal phrase.
       What we should be saying, as the fight for the National 
     Endowment budgets and their survival begins, is that the arts 
     are everybody's province, that their health is a matter of 
     highest national interest.
       Speaker Gingrich, no doubt trying to look like a non-Yahoo 
     in an effort to assume presidential stature, recently 
     expressed his admiration for the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
     in New York and for Atlanta Opera. He should go further, if 
     he wants to shake off the hairy mantle of Georgia Yahoo. He 
     should put his (our) money where his mouth is.
       Newt, get down and support the arts. Don't zero out the NEA 
     budget. Increase it manyfold under wise and stringent 
     supervision, to put our cultural heritage in museums, 
     libraries and concert halls on a solid footing for the 
     future. Help America join the rest of the world in making 
     sure that the treasures of the past--and the arts education 
     system that makes that possible--will prosper. Otherwise, we 
     will all be provincial Yahoos with no point of view worth 
     having.
                                                                    ____

             [From the Atlanta Constitution, Jan. 10, 1995]

                       Making a Case for the Arts

       Chairwoman Jane Alexander of the National Endowment for the 
     Arts believes House Speaker Newt Gingrich is crusading to 
     abolish her agency--a sandbox for the cultural elite, he 
     calls it--because he doesn't understand how it works.
       And so, much in the same manner as first lady Hillary 
     Clinton, Alexander has invited the Georgia Republican to a 
     get-acquainted meeting to answer his questions and, she 
     hopes, to dispel his misgivings.
       The opportunity to enlighten is narrowing. The tentative 
     date for hearings on reauthorizing the endowment is Jan. 20, 
     and the 104th Congress is loaded with newcomers eager to cut 
     government spending who look to Gingrich for guidance.
       First, Alexander ought to disabuse Gingrich and his 
     following of the misconception that a significant blow can be 
     struck for deficit reduction with the demise of the 
     endowment. As vital as its support is to needy arts groups, 
     its budget--$167 million or about one ten-thousandth of all 
     federal spending in fiscal '94--is minuscule by comparison 
     with the billions in cuts required to restore fiscal sanity 
     in Washington.
       Second, Alexander needs to counter the fiction that the 
     endowment is a plaything of the affluent and the avant-garde. 
     True, some cultural colossi, like New York's Metropolitan 
     Opera, receive funding from the endowment and have enough 
     wealthy patrons that they might be weaned without great 
     sacrifice. True, too, a few experimental artworks funded by 
     the endowment have turned out to be highly offensive, but the 
     chances of recurrences should be minimized thanks to new 
     accountability procedures instituted by Alexander.
       The point for Alexander to stress is that if the endowment 
     were terminated, the real victims would be medium-size and 
     smaller arts organizations scattered throughout the country, 
     too little appreciated except in their own back yards. In 
     Gingrich's bailiwick, that would include Marietta's splendid 
     Theatre on the Square and by extension a host of Atlanta 
     assets--the Symphony, the Opera, the Ballet, the Center for 
     Puppetry Arts, the High Museum, the Alliance Theatre and so 
     on.
       What these institutions have managed to do ought to be 
     celebrated by the GOP cost-cutters as a triumph of public-
     private partnerships--leveraging each dollar of endowment 
     funding into $11 from private and other public sources. They 
     are able to attract that support mainly because recognition 
     by the endowment is widely viewed as a national seal of 
     artistic merit.
       There are other good reasons to save the endowment--its 
     youth education mission, its anti-crime programs, even the 
     beneficial economic spinoffs from the arts attractions it 
     supports. But the clincher ought to focus on this 
     generation's legacy to posterity.
       John Boehner of Ohio, chairman of the House GOP conference, 
     opposes the endowment because he calls it ``living high off 
     the hog and passing on the bills to our kids and grandkids.'' 
     But what kind of country will our kids and grandkids inherit 
     if the quality of our serious music, art and drama is 
     diminished and concert halls, theaters and galleries go dark 
     for want of the endowment's precious seed money?
       No one disputes that the endowment must maximize its 
     efficiency. But above all, the NEA deserves to survive.
                                                                    ____

    [From the Washington Edition--Los Angeles Times, Jan. 11, 1995]

 GOP Has a Song for NEA: Taps--Some Congressional Republicans Seek To 
                     Abolish Federal Arts Endowment

       What kind of art should our hard-earned tax dollars go to 
     support, traditional American folk art or sexually explicit 
     avant-garde art? ``Neither,'' the new Republican majority in 
     the House seems poised to answer. That's a shame.
       Two years ago, the arts-funding question was shaped by the 
     scandal of Andres Serrano's ``Piss Christ,'' Robert 
     Mapplethorpe's homoerotic photographs and Karen Finley's nude 
     performance art, all of which had enjoyed some degree of 
     support from the National Endowment for the Arts. But even 
     though the Supreme Court struck down a ``decency clause'' 
     that the NEA imposed under pressure, the entire controversy 
     subsided as the federal agency, under the leadership of Jane 
     Alexander, simply exercised better discretion in selecting 
     artworks to endow.
       This year, however, the philosophical ground has shifted. 
     The House Republican leadership wants to abolish the NEA on 
     principle. Its claim, a familiar conservative one, is that, 
     in the words of House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.), 
     ``there is no constitutional authority for this agency to 
     exist.'' This year, as a result, federal funding for all art 
     is in equal jeopardy, including funding for such mainstream, 
     old-fashioned arts festivals as ``Masters of the Folk 
     Violin'' and ``Masters of the Steel String Guitar,'' both 
     sponsored by the National Council for Traditional Arts.
       Plain-folks art does not cost as much money as fancy-folks 
     art. Putting together an evening of ``Sacred Harp Singing,'' 
     another NCTA effort, or the annual ``Cowboy Poetry 
     Gathering'' does not cost as much as mounting a great 
     classical ballet. But it doesn't come free, either, and the 
     NEA has spent much of its modest appropriation as seed money: 
     small matching grants and other sensible efforts to help 
     groups like the NCTA, Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music 
     and Los Angeles' Craft and Folk Art Museum find their way to 
     private support.
       The argument that there is no constitutional authority for 
     an educational agency such as the NEA rests on the truth that 
     the Constitution makes no provision for public education of 
     any kind. If from that fact we must infer that there can be 
     no funding for an arts endowment, then there can also be none 
     for a National Endowment for the Humanities, a National 
     Science Foundation or any other federal initiative in higher 
     education.
       Armey and the Republican majority can argue against funding 
     the NEA even if the constitutional authority for the agency 
     exists. But if and when they do so, we hope they will not 
     pretend that only a wealthy elite has been served by the NEA, 
     for the opposite is the case. Through the NEA, the spirits of 
     millions of ordinary Americans have been lifted through the 
     traditional craft, song and story of their native land. Those 
     Americans will be spiritually poorer, and the American 
     tradition weaker, if the 
     [[Page S1302]] budget line of the NEA is spitefully reduced 
     to zero.
                                                                    ____

                 [From the Boston Globe, Dec. 17, 1994]

                         America's Art and Soul

       Conservatives looking for Government fat to trim say they 
     can't wait to take a cleaver to the National Endowment for 
     the Arts--That naughty, left-wing frill in the federal 
     budget. They should look and think before they chop, because 
     the NEA is hardly a luxury. It's American bedrock, as solid 
     as the summer concerts on the town green, or dance programs 
     at the local high school, or the puppet shows at the 
     community center.
       While the NEA has hit the headlines for controversies, most 
     notably the funding for photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, the 
     endowment's primary business is supporting family-oriented 
     entertainment, about which it has received little publicity 
     since it was founded in 1965.
       In Boston the NEA money goes to such places as the Handel 
     and Haydn Society, the Berklee College of Music, the 
     Huntington Theater Company, the Boston Ballet, the Chinese 
     Culture Institute, the Boston Center for the Arts and Boston 
     Dance Umbrella, to name a few. The list reflects a national 
     portrait of community involvement and grass-roots culture 
     that is as vitial to a country's strength as the defense 
     budget or a jobs program.
       The NEA's budget is $167 million--approximately 65 cents 
     for every American. This investment provides 5,000 grants, 
     which put up seed money to be matched by local funding. It 
     also stimulates the economy, for the arts put 3.2 million 
     people to work and provide $3.4 billion in federal income 
     taxes. According to the NEA one study showed that the arts 
     generated $37 billion to local businesses around the country.
       A wise investment, not only for the psyche but also for the 
     bottom line. Members of Congress eager to wield the axe 
     should consider the real work and economics of the NEA rather 
     than the aberrations that have made news. Since 1965 it has 
     provided 11,000 individual artists with fellowships--42 
     Pulitzer Prize winners, 47 MacArthur grant recipients and 28 
     National Book Awards authors. The grants came to people as 
     they were struggling to create their art. A country that 
     fails to encourage this loses its genius and its soul.

  Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I fully understand that many Americans are 
troubled when they hear of works distasteful to them that are funded in 
part with their tax dollars. Nevertheless, while the Endowment has 
awarded well over 100,000 grants, fewer than 40 have resulted in any 
controversy whatsoever--a success rate of 99.96 percent. Over the last 
year Chairman Jane Alexander has instituted a series of most valuable 
changes in the agency's procedures. The agency will no longer accept 
applications from organizations, other than the State arts councils, 
which subgrant Endowment funds out to other projects. In addition, the 
Endowment will now require that progress reports be submitted before 
the release of the final third of a grant award. Permission from the 
agency will be necessary before a grantee can modify its activities 
from those approved by the Endowment. These changes give the chairman 
greater oversight over Endowment grants and I believe they will go a 
long way toward addressing the concerns of many of our citizens.
  Chairman Jane Alexander has increased the Endowment's focus on rural 
communities and the inner cities. The Underserved Communities Program 
grants $8.7 million specifically to broaden public access to the arts. 
Even the very limited funds appropriated for the Endowment help keep 
ticket prices reasonable, thus enabling lower income citizens, young 
people, the elderly, and the disabled to gain access to our common 
culture.
  Nothing could be further from the truth than the suggestion that 
support for the arts provided by the National Endowment constitutes a 
subsidy for the wealthy. One of the primary missions of the Arts 
Endowment has been to encourage the spread of American culture beyond 
those individuals, communities, and regions affluent enough to afford 
it on their own. Uncharacteristically among Federal programs, Endowment 
dollars multiply and foster national support for the arts. Yearly 
Endowment grants draw matching grants of approximately $1.4 billion 
from private, State, and local patrons. Thus, before the National 
Endowment for the Arts came into existence, there were only 22 
professional theaters in the entire country and 1 million people 
attended each year. Today, our Nation boasts 420 and 55 million attend. 
There were 58 orchestras before the agency, today, there are over a 
1,000. Fifteen million more Americans attend symphony performances each 
year.
  I think it is rather unfair to our citizens for some individuals to 
assert that only wealthy Americans are interested in the development of 
the arts. I firmly believe and the evidence supports the fact that 
Americans from every walk of life, from every economic level, strongly 
desire and seek access to cultural events in their communities for 
themselves and for their children. The National Endowment for the Arts 
is a testament to the continuing development of our unique culture, to 
our enduring faith in our own creativity and to our world leadership in 
artistic achievement.
  From an economic point of view, the dollars sent by the Arts 
Endowment to communities around the Nation have been an extraordinarily 
successful investment. For every dollar the Endowment invests, there is 
created a tenfold return in jobs, services, and contracts. The arts 
fostered by the National Endowment encourage national and international 
tourism, attract and retain businesses in our communities,
 stimulate real estate development, increase production of exportable 
copyrighted materials and contribute to the tax base. Governors and 
mayors from around the country can attest to the manner in which 
Endowment-supported projects have breathed new life into the downtown 
areas of their towns and cities. New businesses and tourists congregate 
in those areas which have a developed cultural life. San Antonio, TX; 
Cleveland, OH; Greenville, MS; Oklahoma City, OK; and Birmingham, AL 
are among the cities whose studies have shown the enormous economic 
contribution of the arts.

  Mr. President, every parent knows that the arts are crucial in our 
school curricula because they teach young people creativity, increase 
self-discipline, and are a critical means of passing on an 
understanding of American culture and civilization to the next 
generation. Study of even a single artistic discipline is of immense 
value to a child, who may go on to become an avid amateur or patron. 
Last year, the Arts in Education Program distributed millions of 
dollars in partnership grants to the States to pay for artist 
residencies in schools and art teacher training.
  I am most gratified that Chairman Kassebaum and Chairman Jeffords 
will be holding hearings over the next few weeks on authorization of 
the Endowments. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to 
share with those of us on the committee their concerns and ideas so 
that we can work together to shape the Endowment's future role in our 
society as effectively as possible. This tiny investment in our 
Nation's culture makes a statement to ourselves and to the world that 
we view the development of American culture and its availability to our 
citizens as of significant importance. We must not become the only 
Western industrialized nation to declare that our Government cares 
nothing for the development of our culture. National support for the 
arts fosters the creation of community--locally and on the national 
level. Regardless of our differences of wealth, race, religion, and 
political belief, our cultural development binds us together, develops 
our character as Americans, and establishes our common heritage. As 
President John F. Kennedy once said:

       Art and the encouragement of art is political in the most 
     profound sense, not as a weapon in the struggle, but as an 
     instrument of understanding the futility of the struggle 
     between those who share man's faith. Aeschylus and Plato are 
     remembered today long after the triumphs of imperial Athens 
     are gone. I am certain that after the dust of centuries has 
     passed over our cities, we too will be remembered not for 
     victories or defeats in battle or politics, but for our 
     contributions to the human spirit.
     

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