Congressional Record, Volume 143 Issue 98 (Friday, July 11, 1997)

[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 98 (Friday, July 11, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H5138-H5168]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

PERSONAL EXPLANATION

Mr. MINGE. Mr. Chairman, I was unavoidably detained on rollcall No.
264. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''
The amendment offered by Representatives Klug, Miller, and Foley to
increase by $292 million the bill's rescission of $100 million from the
Energy Department's Clean Coal Technology Program [CCTP] is one I agree
with wholeheartedly.
This program has been plagued by a history of waste and
mismanagement. A 1991 U.S. General Accounting Office [GAO] report
discovered that a large portion of projects had either been terminated
within a few years of being unfunded, experienced substantial schedule
delays, or exceeded their budgets. In addition, the same GAO report
found that ``DOE selected some projects that are demonstrating
technologies that might have been commercialized without federal
assistance.''
During an era of supposed fiscal responsibility, this program
illuminates inefficiencies of the past.

Amendment Offered by Mr. Royce

The CHAIRMAN. The unfinished business is the demand for a recorded
vote on the amendment offered by the gentleman from California [Mr.
Royce] on which further proceedings were postponed and on which the
noes prevailed by voice vote.
The Clerk will designate the amendment.
The text of the amendment is as follows:

Amendment offered by Mr. Royce:
Page 59, line 10, insert after the dollar amount ``(reduced
by $21,014,000)''.

recorded vote

The CHAIRMAN. A recorded vote has been demanded.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 175,
noes 246, not voting 13, as follows:

[Roll No. 265]

AYES--175

Allen
Andrews
Armey
Bachus
Baldacci
Barcia
Barr
Barrett (WI)
Bass
Becerra
Berry
Bilbray
Blagojevich
Blumenauer
Blunt
Boswell
Bryant
Campbell
Canady
Cannon
Carson
Castle
Chabot
Christensen
Coble
Collins
Condit
Cox
Crane
Danner
Davis (FL)
Deal
DeFazio
DeGette
Dellums
Deutsch
Dickey
Duncan
Dunn
Ehlers
Ehrlich
Emerson
Ensign
Eshoo
Fawell
Filner
Foley
Fowler
Franks (NJ)
Frelinghuysen
Furse
Gallegly
Ganske
Gejdenson
Goode
Goodlatte
Goodling
Goss
Gutknecht
Harman
Hastings (FL)
Hayworth
Hefley
Hinchey
Hoekstra
Hooley
Horn
Hulshof
Hunter
Hutchinson
Inglis
Johnson (WI)
Jones
Kasich
Kelly
Kennedy (MA)
Kennedy (RI)
Kind (WI)
Kingston
Kleczka
Klug
LaFalce
Latham
Lazio
Leach
Levin
Lewis (GA)
LoBiondo
Lowey
Luther
Manzullo
Markey
McCarthy (MO)
McCarthy (NY)
McCollum
McGovern
McHugh
McIntosh
McIntyre
McKinney
McNulty
Meehan
Menendez
Metcalf
Miller (CA)
Miller (FL)
Minge
Moran (KS)
Morella
Nadler
Neal
Neumann
Norwood
Nussle
Obey
Olver
Owens
Pallone
Paul
Paxon
Peterson (MN)
Petri
Pitts
Porter
Portman
Quinn
Radanovich
Ramstad
Rivers
Rogan
Rohrabacher
Ros-Lehtinen
Rothman
Roukema
Roybal-Allard
Royce
Ryun
Salmon
Sanders
Sanford
Saxton
Scarborough
Schumer
Sensenbrenner
Shadegg
Shaw
Shays
Sherman
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith, Adam
Smith, Linda
Souder
Stabenow
Stark
Stearns
Stump
Sununu
Talent
Tanner
Tauscher
Taylor (NC)
Thune
Tiahrt
Tierney
Torres
Upton
Velazquez
Vento
Waxman
Weldon (FL)
Wexler
Weygand
White
Woolsey

NOES--246

Abercrombie
Ackerman
Aderholt
Archer
Baesler
Baker
Ballenger
Barrett (NE)
Bartlett
Barton
Bateman
Bentsen
Bereuter
Bilirakis
Bishop
Bliley
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bono
Borski
Boyd
Brady
Brown (CA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Bunning
Burr
Burton
Buyer
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Capps
Cardin
Chambliss
Chenoweth
Clay
Clayton
Clement
Clyburn
Coburn
Combest
Conyers
Cook
Cooksey
Costello
Coyne
Cramer
Crapo
Cubin
Cummings
Cunningham
Davis (IL)
Davis (VA)
Delahunt
DeLauro
DeLay
Diaz-Balart
Dicks
Dingell
Dixon
Doggett
Dooley
Doyle
Dreier
Edwards
Engel
English
Etheridge
Evans
Everett
Ewing
Fattah
Fazio
Flake
Foglietta
Forbes
Ford
Fox
Frank (MA)
Frost
Gekas
Gephardt
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gilman
Gonzalez
Gordon
Graham
Granger
Green
Greenwood
Gutierrez
Hall (OH)
Hall (TX)
Hamilton
Hastert
Hastings (WA)
Hefner
Herger
Hill
Hilleary
Hilliard
Hinojosa
Hobson
Holden
Houghton
Hoyer
Hyde
Istook
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jefferson
Jenkins
John
Johnson (CT)
Johnson, E.B.
Johnson, Sam
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kennelly
Kildee
Kilpatrick
Kim
King (NY)
Klink
Knollenberg
Kolbe
Kucinich
LaHood
Lampson
Lantos
Largent
LaTourette
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
Linder
Lipinski
Livingston
Lofgren
Lucas
Maloney (CT)
Maloney (NY)
Manton
Martinez
Mascara
Matsui
McCrery
McDade
McDermott
McHale
McInnis
McKeon
Meek
Mica
Millender-McDonald
Mink
Moakley
Mollohan
Moran (VA)
Murtha
Myrick
Nethercutt
Ney
Northup
Oberstar
Ortiz
Oxley
Packard
Pappas
Parker
Pascrell
Pastor
Payne
Pease
Pelosi
Peterson (PA)
Pickering
Pickett
Pombo
Pomeroy
Poshard
Price (NC)
Pryce (OH)
Rahall
Rangel
Redmond
Regula
Reyes
Riley
Rodriguez
Roemer
Rogers
Rush
Sabo
Sanchez
Sandlin
Sawyer
Schaefer, Dan
Schaffer, Bob
Scott
Serrano
Sessions
Shimkus
Shuster
Sisisky
Skaggs
Skeen
Skelton
Smith (OR)
Smith (TX)
Snowbarger
Snyder
Solomon
Spence
Spratt
Stenholm
Stokes
Strickland
Stupak
Tauzin
Taylor (MS)
Thomas
Thompson
Thornberry
Thurman
Towns
Traficant
Turner
Visclosky
Walsh
Wamp
Waters
Watkins
Watt (NC)
Watts (OK)
Weller
Whitfield

[[Page H5139]]

Wicker
Wise
Wolf
Wynn
Yates
Young (FL)

NOT VOTING--13

Berman
Bonior
Boucher
Doolittle
Farr
Hansen
Hostettler
Molinari
Riggs
Schiff
Slaughter
Weldon (PA)
Young (AK)

{time} 1043

Mr. TORRES changed his vote from ``no'' to ``aye.''
So the amendment was rejected.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.

personal explanation

Mr. RIGGS. Mr. Chairman, on rollcall No.'s 264 and 265, I was unable
to be present to vote due to a personal family commitment off of
Capitol Hill. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye'' on both
matters.

{time} 1045

The CHAIRMAN. If there are no further amendments at this point, the
Clerk will read.
The Clerk read as follows:

National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities

National Endowment for the Arts

grants and administration

For necessary expenses of the National Endowment for the
Arts, $10,000,000.

Point of Order

Mr. CRANE. Mr. Chairman, I rise for a point of order.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Illinois will state his point of
order.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order that the language
contained on page 76, lines 10 through 13, constitutes an unauthorized
appropriation in violation of clause 2 of House rule XXI.
Mr. Chairman, the language I have specified is an appropriation of
$10 million for necessary expenses of the National Endowment for the
Arts. Authorization in law for the National Endowment for the Arts
expired in fiscal year 1993.
Mr. Chairman, specifically, clause 2(a) of House rule XXI states,
``No appropriation shall be reported in a general appropriation bill
for any expenditure not previously authorized by law.''
Mr. Chairman, since the National Endowment for the Arts is clearly
not authorized in law, and the bill includes an appropriation of funds
for this agency, I make a point of order that the language is in
obvious violation of clause 2 of rule XXI.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I request that the gentleman from Illinois
[Mr. Crane] withhold his point of order to permit me to make a
statement.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Illinois may be heard on his point
of order.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I wondered whether he would defer his point
of order.
The CHAIRMAN. Will the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Crane] reserve
the point of order only to permit the gentleman from Illinois [Mr.
Yates] to strike the last word?
Mr. CRANE. Yes, I will do that, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Illinois [Mr.
Crane] for permitting me to discuss the amendment and to hold off the
point of order.
I dare to think of offering an amendment in view of what happened on
the floor yesterday, in view of the remarkable closeness of the vote,
which our side thought we had won, I dare to hope that perhaps some of
my colleagues on the other side may, including the gentleman from
Illinois [Mr. Crane], might want to give the Members of the House a
chance to vote on NEA to see whether or not the House would again
sustain his position in opposition to the point of order.
Would it be as close as the vote on the rule? I would be willing to
bet that the vote on NEA itself would support NEA by at least 50 votes.
If my memory serves me correctly, that was the difference the last time
my colleague rose to kill NEA.
Is it possible that my colleague, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr.
Crane], might withdraw his point of order to give us this opportunity
to let the Members of the House vote on the subject? What does he
think?
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. YATES. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Chairman, I respectfully like the approach of the
gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Yates] to this issue, and I know he has
fought valiantly through the years. But, as I indicated, these are the
rules of the House; and as a result of that, I still adhere to the
point of order that I made, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. YATES. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from
Illinois [Mr. Crane] is absolutely correct. They are the rules of the
House. I was hoping that perhaps he would overlook the strict version
of the rules of the House and give us the opportunity to have our vote
on NEA.
Under the circumstances, Mr. Chairman, I have no alternative except
to concede the point of order.

Point of Order

The CHAIRMAN. Does the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Crane] insist on
his point of order?
Mr. CRANE. I do insist on my point of order, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there any other Member that wishes to be heard on
the point of order?
The Chair is prepared to rule. In reviewing section 11(c) of the
National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965, codified in
title 20, section 960, of the United States Code, the Chair finds that
the authorization for the National Endowment for the Arts has lapsed
with fiscal year 1993.
The provision contains an unauthorized appropriation, and the point
of order is sustained. Accordingly, the paragraph is stricken from the
bill.

Amendment Offered by Mr. Ehlers

Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:

Amendment Offered by Mr. Ehlers:
Page 76, after line 13, insert the following:

SUPPORT FOR THE ARTS

Financial Assistance to States and Local Education Agencies To Support
the Arts

For the necessary expenses to carry out section 202,
$80,000,000. Each amount otherwise appropriated in this Act
(other than in this paragraph) is hereby reduced by 0.62
percent.

General Provisions

termination of the national endowment for the arts

Sec. 201. (a) Repealers.--Sections 5, 5A, and 6 of the
National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of
1965 (42 U.S.C. 954, 955) are repealed.
(b) Conforming Amendments.--
(1) Declaration of purpose.--Section 2 of the National
Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 (20
U.S.C. 951) is amended--
(A) in paragraphs (1) and (6) by striking ``arts and the'',
(B) in paragraphs (2) and (5) by striking ``and the arts'',
(C) in paragraphs (4), (5), and (9) by striking ``the arts
and'',
(D) in paragraph (7) by striking ``the practice of art
and'',
(E) by striking paragraph (11), and
(F) in paragraph (12) by striking ``the Arts and'' and
redesignating such paragraph as paragraph (11).
(2) Definitions.--Section 3 of the National Foundation on
the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 952) is
amended--
(A) by striking subsections (b), (c), and (f), and
(B) in subsection (d)--
(i) by striking ``to foster American artistic creativity,
to commission works of art,'',
(ii) in paragraph (1)--

(I) by striking ``the National Council on the Arts or'',
and
(II) by striking ``, as the case may be,'',

(iii) in paragraph (2)--

(I) by striking ``sections 5(l) and'' and inserting
``section'',
(II) in subparagraph (A) by striking ``artistic or'', and
(III) in subparagraph (B)--

(aa) by striking ``the National Council on the Arts and'',
and
(bb) by striking ``, as the case may be,'', and
(iv) by striking ``(d)'' and inserting ``(b)'', and
(C) by redesignating subsections (e) and (g) as subsections
(c) and (d), respectively.
(3) Establishment of National Foundation on the Arts and
Humanities.--Section 4(a) of the National Foundation on the
Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 953(a)) is
amended--
(A) in subsection (a)--
(i) by striking ``the Arts and'' each place it appears, and
(ii) by striking ``a National Endowment for the Arts,'',
(B) in subsection (b) by striking ``and the arts'', and
(C) in the heading of such section by striking ``the arts
and''.
(4) Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.--
Section 9 of the National Foundation on the Arts and the
Humanities Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 958) is amended--
(A) in subsection (a) by striking ``the Arts and'',
(B) in subsection (b) by striking ``the Chairperson of the
National Endowment for the Arts,'',

[[Page H5140]]

(C) in subsection (c)--
(i) in paragraph (1) by striking ``the Chairperson of the
National Endowment for the Arts and'',
(ii) in paragraph (3)--
(I) by striking ``the National Endowment for the Arts'',
and
(II) by striking ``Humanities,'' and inserting
``Humanities'', and
(iii) in paragraphs (6) and (7) by striking ``the arts
and''.
(5) Administrative functions.--Section 10 of the National
Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 (20
U.S.C. 959) is amended--
(A) in subsection (a)--
(i) in the matter preceding paragraph (1)--

(I) by striking ``in them'',
(II) by striking ``the Chairperson of the National
Endowment for the Arts and'', and
(III) by striking ``, in carrying out their respective
functions,'',

(ii) by striking ``of an Endowment'' each place it appears,
(iii) in paragraph (2)--

(I) by striking ``of that Endowment'' the first place it
appears and inserting ``the National Endowment for the
Humanities'',
(II) by striking ``sections 6(f) and'' and inserting
``section'', and
(III) by striking ``sections 5(c) and'' and inserting
``section'', and

(iv) in paragraph (3) by striking ``Chairperson's
functions, define their duties, and supervise their
activities'' and inserting ``functions, define the
activities, and supervise the activities of the
Chairperson'',
(B) in subsection (b)--
(i) by striking paragraphs (1), (2), and (3), and
(ii) in paragraph (4)--

(I) by striking ``one of its Endowments and received by the
Chairperson of an Endowment'' and inserting ``the National
Endowment for the Humanities and received by the Chairperson
of that Endowment'', and
(II) by striking ``(4)'',

(C) by striking subsection (c),
(D) in subsection (d)--
(i) by striking ``Chairperson of the National Endowment for
the Arts and the'', and
(ii) by striking ``each'' the first place it appears,
(E) in subsection (e)--
(i) by striking ``National Council on the Arts and the'',
and
(ii) by striking ``, respectively,'', and
(F) in subsection (f)--
(i) in paragraph (1)--

(I) by striking ``Chairperson of the National Endowment for
the Arts and the'', and
(II) by striking ``sections 5(c) and'' and inserting
``section'',

(ii) in paragraph (2)(A)--

(I) by striking ``either of the Endowments'' and inserting
``National Endowment for the Humanities'', and
(II) by striking ``involved'', and

(iii) in paragraph (3)--

(I) by striking ``that provided such financial assistance''
each place it appears, and
(II) in subparagraph (C) by striking ``the National
Endowment for the Arts or''.

(c) Authorization of Appropriations.--Section 11 of the
National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of
1965 (42 U.S.C. 960) is amended--
(A) in subsection (a)(1)--
(i) by striking subparagraphs (A) and (C), and
(ii) in subparagraph (B) by striking ``(B)'',
(B) in subsection (a)(2)--
(i) by striking subparagraph (A), and
(ii) in subparagraph (B)--

(I) by striking ``(B)'', and
(II) by redesignating clauses (i) and (ii) as subparagraphs
(A) and (B), respectively,

(C) in subsection (a)(3)--
(i) by striking subparagraph (A),
(ii) by redesignating subparagraph (B) as subparagraph (A),
(iii) by striking subparagraph (C), and
(iv) in subparagraph (D)--

(I) by striking ``(D)'' and inserting ``(B)'', and
(II) by striking ``and subparagraph (B)'',

(D) in subsection (a)(4)--
(i) by striking ``Chairperson of the National Endowment for
the Arts and the'',
(ii) by striking ``, as the case may be,'', and
(iii) by striking ``section 5(e), section 5(l)(2), section
7(f),'' and inserting ``section 7(f)'',
(E) in subsection (c)--
(i) by striking paragraph (1), and
(ii) in paragraph (2) by striking ``(2)'',
(F) in subsection (d)--
(i) by striking paragraph (1), and
(ii) in paragraph (2) by striking ``(2)'', and
(G) by striking subsection (f).
(d) Transition Provisions.--
(1) Transfer of property.--On the effective date of the
amendments made by this section, all property donated,
bequeathed, or devised to the National Endowment for the Arts
and held by such Endowment on such date is hereby transferred
to the National Endowment for the Humanities.
(2) Termination of operations.--The Director of the Office
of Management and Budget shall provide for the termination of
the affairs of the National Endowment for the Arts and the
National Council on the Arts. Except as provided in paragraph
(1), the Director shall provide for the transfer or other
disposition of personnel, assets, liabilities, grants,
contracts, property, records, and unexpended balances of
appropriations, authorizations, allocations, and other funds
held, used, arising from, available to, or to be made
available in connection with implementing the authorities
terminated by the amendments made by this section.
(e) Conforming Amendments to Other Laws.
(1) Poet laureate consultant.--Section 601 of Arts,
Humanities, and Museums Amendments of 1985 (2 U.S.C. 177) is
amended by striking subsection (c).
(2) Executive schedule pay rate.--Title 5 of the United
States Code is amended in section 5314 by striking the item
relating to the Chairman of the National Endowment for the
Arts.
(3) Inspector General Act of 1978.--Subsection (a)(2) of
the first section 8G of the Inspector General Act of 1978 (5
U.S.C. App. 8G(a)(2)) is amended by striking ``the National
Endowment for the Arts''.
(4) Delta Region Preservation Commission.--Section 907(a)
of National Parks and Recreation Act of 1978 (16 U.S.C.
230f(a)) is amended--
(A) by striking paragraph (7),
(B) in the first paragraph (8) by striking the period at
the end and inserting ``; and'', and
(C) by redesignating the first paragraph (8) as paragraph
(7).
(5) National teacher academies.--Section 514(b)(4) of the
Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 1103c(b)(4)) is
amended by striking ``and the National Endowment for the
Humanities''.
(6) Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Program.--Section 932(a)(3)
of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 1134i(a)(3))
is amended by striking ``the National Endowment for the
Arts,''.
(7) Graduate assistance in areas of national need.--Section
943(b) of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C.
1134n(b)) is amended by striking ``National Endowments for
the Arts and the Humanities'' and inserting ``National
Endowment for the Humanities''.
(8) American Folklife Center.--Section 4(b) of the American
Folklife Preservation Act (20 U.S.C. 2103(b)) is amended--
(A) by striking paragraph (5), and
(B) by redesignating paragraphs (6) and (7) as paragraphs
(5) and (6), respectively.
(9) Japan-United States Friendship Commission.--Section
4(a) of the Japan-United States Friendship Act (22 U.S.C.
2903(a)) is amended--
(A) in paragraph (3) by adding ``and'' at the end, and
(B) by redesignating paragraph (5) as paragraph (4).
(10) Standards and systems for outdoor advertising Signs.--
Section 131(q)(1) of title 23, United States Code, is amended
by striking ``including the National Endowment for the
Arts,''.
(11) International Culture and Trade Center Commission.--
Section 7(c)(1) of Federal Triangle Development Act (40
U.S.C. 1106(c)(1)) is amended--
(A) by striking subparagraph (I), and
(B) by redesignating subparagraph (J) as subparagraph (I).
(12) Livable cities.--The Livable Cities Act of 1978 (42
U.S.C. 8143 et seq.) is amended--
(A) in section 804--
(i) in paragraph (4) by inserting ``and'' at the end,
(ii) by striking paragraphs (5) and (7), and
(iii) in paragraph (6)--

(I) by striking ``; and'' at the end and inserting a
period, and
(II) by redesignating such paragraph as paragraph (5), and

(B) in section 805--
(i) in subsection (a)--

(I) by striking ``, in consultation with the Chairman,'',
and
(II) in paragraph (3) by striking ``jointly by the
Secretary and the Chairman'' and inserting ``by the
Secretary'',

(ii) in subsection (b) by striking ``and the Chairman shall
establish jointly'' and inserting ``shall establish'',
(iii) in subsection (c) by striking ``jointly by the
Secretary and the Chairman'' and inserting ``by the
Secretary'',
(iv) in subsection (d)--

(I) by striking ``consult with the Chairman and'', and
(II) by striking ``jointly by the Secretary and the
Chairman'' and inserting ``by the Secretary'', and

(v) in subsection (e) by striking ``, in cooperation with
the Chairman,''.
(13) Conversion of railroad passenger provisions.--Title 49
of the United States Code is amended--
(A) in section 5562 by striking subsection (c),
(B) in section 5563(a)(4)--
(i) in subparagraph (A) by adding ``or'' at the end,
(ii) by striking subparagraph (B), and
(iii) by redesignating subparagraph (C) as subparagraph
(B),
(C) in section 5564(c)(1)(C) by striking ``or the Chairman
of the National Endowment for the Arts'', and
(D) in section 5565(c)(1)(B) by striking ``or the Chairman
of the National Endowment for the Arts''.
(14) Educational Research, Development, Dissemination and
Improvement Act of 1994.--Title IX of Public Law 103-227 (20
U.S.C. 6001 et seq.) is amended--
(A) in section 921(j)--
(i) by striking paragraph (5), and
(ii) by redesignating paragraphs (6), (7) and (8) as
paragraphs (5), (6), and (7), respectively, and
(B) in section 931(h)(3)--
(i) by striking subparagraph (H), and

[[Page H5141]]

(ii) by redesignating subparagraphs (I), (J), (K), and (L)
as subparagraphs(H), (I), (J), and (K), respectively.
(15) Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.--The
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended by
the Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 (Public Law 103-
382), is amended--
(A) in section 2101(b) by striking ``the National Endowment
for the Arts,'',
(B) in section 2205(c)(1)(D) by striking ``the National
Endowment for the Arts,'' and inserting ``and'',
(C) in section 2208(d)(1)(H)(v)--
(i) by inserting ``and'' after ``Services,'' the 2nd place
it appears, and
(ii) by striking ``, and the National Endowment for the
Arts'',
(D) in section 2209(b)(1)(C)(vi) by striking ``the National
Endowment for the Arts,'',
(E) in section 3121(c)(2) by striking ``the National
Endowment for the Arts,'',
(F) in section 10401--
(i) in subsection (d)(6) by striking ``the National
Endowment for the Arts,'', and
(ii) in subsection (e)(2) by striking ``the National
Endowment for the Arts,'',
(G) in section 10411(a)--
(i) by striking paragraph (2), and
(ii) by redesignating paragraphs (3) through (8) as
paragraphs (2) through (7), respectively,
(H) in section 10412(b)--
(i) in paragraph (2) by striking ``the Chairman of the
National Endowment for the Arts,'', and
(ii) in paragraph (7) by striking ``, the Chairman of the
National Endowment for the Arts'',
(I) in section 10414(a)(2)(B)--
(i) in clause (i) by inserting ``and'' at the end,
(ii) by striking clause (ii), and
(iii) by redesignating clause (iii) as clause (ii).
(16) Delta Region Heritage; New Orleans Jazz Commission.--
Public Law 103-433 (108 Stat. 4515) is amended--
(A) in section 1104(b) by striking ``the Chairman of the
National Endowment for the Arts,'', and
(B) in section 1207(b)(6) by striking ``and one member from
recommendations submitted by the Chairman of the National
Endowment of the Arts,''.
(f) Effective Date.--This section shall take effect on
October 1, 1997.

federal financial assistance to the states and local education agencies
to support the arts

Sec. 202. (a) Short Title.--This section may be cited as
the ``Art for Kids Act''.
(b) Grants to States.--From funds allotted under subsection
(e)(2), the Secretary of Education may make grants to
eligible States to support the arts in such a manner as will
furnish adequate programs, facilities, and services in the
arts to all the people and communities in each of the several
States through--
(1) projects and productions which have substantial
national or international artistic and cultural significance;
(2) projects and productions, meeting professional
standards of authenticity or tradition, irrespective of
origin, which are of significant merit;
(3) projects and productions that will encourage and assist
artists to work in residence at an educational or cultural
institution;
(4) projects and productions which have substantial
artistic and cultural significance;
(5) projects and productions that will encourage public
knowledge, education, understanding, and appreciation of the
arts;
(6) workshops that will encourage and develop the
appreciation and enjoyment of the arts by our citizens;
(7) programs for the arts at the local level; and
(8) projects that enhance managerial and organizational
skills and capabilities.
(c) Grants to Local Education Agencies.--From funds
allotted under subsection (e)(1), the Secretary of Education
may make grants to eligible local education agencies to carry
out activities relating to the arts for the benefit of
children.
(d) Eligibility.--To be eligible to receive a grant under
this section in any fiscal year, a State or local education
agency shall submit an application for such grants at such
time as shall be specified by the Secretary and accompany
such application with a plan that the Secretary finds--
(1) in the case of a State applicant, designates or
provides for the establishment of a State agency (hereinafter
in this section referred to as the ``State agency'') as the
sole agency for the administration of the State plan;
(2) provides that funds paid to the State or the local
education agency under this section will be expended solely
on projects, productions, and activities approved by the
State agency or the local education agency, as the case may
be, described in subsection (b) or (c), respectively;
(3) provides that such projects, productions, and
activities will be carried out--
(A) in public, private, or public charter schools;
(B) on government property;
(C) in government-owned or community art museums; or
(D) in government-owned or community theaters;
(4) provides that the State agency or the local education
agency, as the case may be, will make such reports, in such
form and containing such information, as the Secretary may
from time to time require, including a description of the
progress made toward achieving the goals of the plan
involved;
(5) provides--
(A) assurances that the State agency has held, after
reasonable notice, public meetings in the State to allow all
groups of artists, interested organizations, and the public
to present views and make recommendations regarding the State
plan; and
(B) a summary of such recommendations and the State
agency's response to such recommendations;
(6) contains--
(A) a description of the level of participation during the
most recent preceding year for which information is available
by artists, artists' organizations, and arts organizations in
projects and productions for which financial assistance is
provided under this section;
(B) in the case of a State applicant, for the most recent
preceding year for which information is available, a
description of the extent projects and productions receiving
financial assistance from the State agency are available to
all people and communities in the State; and
(C) a description of projects and productions receiving
financial assistance under this section that exist or are
being developed to secure wider participation of artists,
artists' organizations, and arts organizations identified
under clause (i) of this subparagraph or that address the
availability of the arts to all people or communities
identified under subparagraph (B);
(7) an assurance that no part of a grant received under
this section will be used for any project, production, or
activity that is obscene or contains sexually explicit
conduct;
(8) an assurance that no part of a grant received under
this section will be used to provide financial assistance to
any applicant who in the then preceding 5-year period had
artistic control of, or contributed significant financial
support for any project, production, or activity that was
obscene or contained sexually explicit conduct; and
(9) an assurance that such funds will be used to
supplement, and not to supplant, non-Federal funds.

No application may be approved unless the accompanying plan
satisfies the requirements specified in this subsection.
(e) Allotment of Funds.--
(1) 60 percent of the funds appropriated for any fiscal
year to carry out this section shall be allotted by the
Secretary among local education agencies based on the
population of children who are not less than 5 years of age,
and not more than 17 years of age, residing in the
geographical area under the jurisdiction of such agencies.
(2) 37 percent of the funds appropriated for any fiscal
year to carry out this section shall be allotted by the
Secretary among the States as follows:
(A) If the amount appropriated for a fiscal year does not
exceed $11,200,000, then the each State shall receive an
equal share of such amount.
(B) If the amount appropriated for a fiscal year does
exceed $11,200,000, then--
(i) the each State shall receive $200,000; and
(ii) the amount remaining after making the allotment
required by clause (i) shall be allocated among the States
based on population.
(f) Maintenance of Effort.--
(1) States.--If in any fiscal year the amount of non-
Federal funds expended by a State to carry out activities
relating to the arts is less that the amount of such funds so
expended in the preceding fiscal year by such State, then the
amount such State would be eligible to receive under this
section but for the operation of this paragraph shall be
reduced by 3 times the percentage reduction of such non-
Federal funds.
(2) Local Education Agencies.--(A) Except as provided in
subparagraph (B), if in any fiscal year the amount of non-
Federal funds expended by a local education agency to carry
out activities relating to the arts is less than 90 percent
the amount of such funds so expended in the preceding fiscal
year by such agency, then such agency shall be ineligible to
receive a grant under this section for each fiscal year in 5-
year period beginning after the fiscal year in which the
reduction occurs.
(B) If throughout any period of 5 consecutive fiscal years
the aggregate amount of non-Federal funds expended by a local
education agency to carry out activities relating to the arts
is less than 80 percent the amount of such funds so expended
in the 5-year period ending immediately before such period of
5 consecutive fiscal years, then such agency shall be
ineligible to receive a grant under this section for each
fiscal year in 5-year period beginning immediately after such
period of 5 consecutive fiscal years during which the
reduction occurs.
(g) Compliance.--Whenever the Secretary, after reasonable
notice and opportunity for hearing, finds that--
(1) a State agency or local education agency is not
complying substantially with terms and conditions of its plan
approved under this section; or
(2) any funds granted to a State agency or local education
agency under this section have been diverted from the
purposes for which they were allotted or paid;

the Secretary shall immediately notify the Secretary of the
Treasury and the State

[[Page H5142]]

agency or local education agency with respect to which such
finding was made that no further grants will be made under
this section to such agency until there is no longer any
default or failure to comply or the diversion has been
corrected, or, if compliance or correction is impossible,
until such agency repays or arranges the repayment of the
Federal funds which have been improperly diverted or
expended.
(h) Guidelines.--The Secretary shall issue guidelines that
facilitate compliance with this section.
(i) Definitions.--For purposes of this section--
(1) the term ``arts'' includes, but is not limited to,
music (instrumental and vocal), dance, drama, folk art,
creative writing, architecture and allied fields, painting,
sculpture, photography, graphic and craft arts, costume and
fashion design, motion pictures, television, radio, film,
video, tape and sound recording, the arts related to the
presentation, performance, execution, and exhibition of such
major art forms, all those traditional arts practiced by the
diverse peoples of this country, and the study and
application of the arts to the human environment;
(2) the term ``sexually explicit conduct'' has the meaning
given it in section 2256 of title 18, United States Code;
(3) the term ``local education agency'' has the meaning
given it in section 14101 of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act of 1965;
(4) the term ``production'' means plays (with or without
music), ballet, dance and choral performances, concerts,
recitals, operas, exhibitions, readings, motion pictures,
television, radio, film, video tape and sound recordings, and
any other activities involving the execution or rendition of
the arts;
(5) the term ``project'' means programs organized to carry
out this section, including programs to foster American
artistic creativity, to commission works of art, to create
opportunities for individuals to develop artistic talents
when carried on as a part of a program otherwise included in
this definition, and to develop and enhance public knowledge
and understanding of the arts, and includes, where
appropriate, rental or purchase of facilities, purchase or
rental of land, and acquisition of equipment, and includes
the renovation of facilities if (i) the amount of the
expenditure of Federal funds for such purpose in the case of
any project does not exceed $250,000;
(6) the term ``Secretary'' means the Secretary of
Education; and
(7) the term ``State'' means any of the several States, the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, Guam,
American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, or the Virgin
Islands of the United States.
(i) Report by Inspector General.--The Inspector General of
the Department of Education shall submit annually to the
Congress a report describing the extent to which recipients
of grants made under subsections (b) and (c) comply with the
requirements of this section.
(j) Authorization of Appropriations.--There is authorized
to be appropriated to carry out this section $80,000,000 for
fiscal year 1998.

The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to House Resolution 181, the gentleman from
Michigan [Mr. Ehlers] and a Member opposed the gentleman from Illinois
[Mr. Yates] each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Ehlers].
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
This amendment is an attempt to mediate or to end a long-standing
dispute in the House of Representatives regarding funding of the arts.
As my colleagues well know, every year we have a battle about the NEA
and the manner in which it disburses Federal funding. This year for the
first time it appears definite that the House will not approve funding
for the NEA, as we just observed.
This amendment is an effort to separate the issue into two aspects.
One is the funding of the arts. The second is the method of
distributing the funding for the arts. The purpose of my amendment is
to avoid the battles we have had in the past about the NEA and the
manner in which they distributed their funds by developing a new
distribution system and yet maintain the funding of the arts that we
have had during the past year.
The amount of money we are arguing about is relatively small in the
sense of the amount per citizen. Last year we funded the arts in this
Nation to the tune of 38 cents per capita. The bill that is before us
had great difficulty reaching the floor. As we all know, the rule
passed by only one vote. And yet the entire debate appeared to focus on
the arts and the funding for the arts.
I happen to support the arts. I also support funding for the arts. In
fact, I support Federal funding for the arts when it is handled
appropriately.
This amendment will provide appropriate funding for the arts. The NEA
has proved to be a lightning rod. It has attracted all types of
criticism because they have, upon occasion, given money for art which
is profane, or obscene, or vulgar, or sacrilegious, or sometimes all
four.
The amendment avoids this problem by recognizing that there are not
enough votes in this body, as it is presently constituted, to support
the continuation of the NEA, and simply says we will recognize the fact
that the NEA cannot pass the House of Representatives but it is very
important to continue the funding.
This amendment has other advantages over past methods of distributing
funding. One of my goals was to achieve equity. Currently we have
approximately $229,000 contributed by every Member's district toward
the operation of the NEA and the funding of the arts. Of that amount,
most districts do not get anywhere near that kind of money back.
In fact, 25 percent of the arts funding distributed in programs by
the NEA went to one State. Let me say that again. One-fourth of all
arts programs funding went to one State. That is hardly what one would
consider equitable funding. I refuse to believe that one-fourth of the
worthy artists in this country all reside in one State.
The amount we are advocating is $80 million, which is even less than
last year. It is 31 cents per capita. So if any citizen should happen
to write one of my colleagues and object to the Federal funding of the
arts, they are spending more on their stamp than they spend on support
of the arts. I think that helps put this in perspective.
This is not, however, a reduction from last year, even though it is
almost a $20 million reduction in total funding. It simply gets rid of
$20 million in overhead and internal operations of the NEA which we
will not be perpetuating.
The amendment is somewhat vague about the precise guidelines to be
followed in distributing the funds, and that was done deliberately
because, at the request of the authorizing committee, they wish to
prepare an authorization bill. And we have a gentleman's agreement that
the actions of the authorizing committee will, in fact, guide the
deliberations of the House members of the conference once this bill
reaches the conference committee.
Now, I am concerned, because this effort emphasizes funding for the
arts and equitable distribution for the funding of the arts, and I have
been told that some of the Members on this body on the other side of
the aisle plan to vote against this amendment because it does not
continue the NEA.
I urge Members on the other side of the aisle not to listen to that
argument. I happen to believe funding the arts is more important than
the existence of the NEA. I think it is much preferable to send a bill
from this House containing $80 million to fund the arts and provide
some continuation of funding than to send a bill across to the other
side of the rotunda which has zero dollars appropriated for the funding
of the arts.
So I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this
bill. This is a new approach that will provide block grants to the
States. It will provide as much funding for the arts commissions for
their own general distributional purposes as they had last year in
every State, or, perhaps, in many cases more. Approximately 26 of the
50 States will get more money this time because we will not have one-
fourth going to one State.
Furthermore, it provides additional money for arts education in the
schools, and I believe that is very, very important. First of all, it
is proven that arts education at an early age helps in brain
development and helps students do better in other fields. But, in
addition to that, I believe that proper arts education will help
develop greater arts appreciation in this Nation and will ensure
healthy continuation of the arts in the future.
So Mr. Chairman, I urge that this amendment be adopted, that we not
get wrapped up in the details of the distribution mechanism. We can
certainly work that out through the authorizing committee as we go to
conference. But this, I believe, is a worthy amendment which will
continue funding for the arts even though the NEA will no longer exist
as the House bill passes.

[[Page H5143]]

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes, and I want to
request the attention of the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Ehlers].
I asked NEA how much money is being allocated to the States; and I
was told that by statute 35 percent of the program funds are being
allocated to the States, but that in practice 37 percent of their
program funds. I was told also that under their interpretation the
amount that my colleague would make available would be less for each
State than the amount they currently get.
I thought the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Ehlers] ought to know that
so that he might have the opportunity of verifying it with NEA, as
well.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. YATES. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I am aware of those figures. First of all,
I think two comments must be made. They are per-State figures. They
also include roughly $2 million which is designated for arts education.
We are designating far more than that for arts education. I did not
include that in the title.
Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, the other
fact that they distributed I think is very misleading. They do not
include, in the total being distributed to the States, the arts funding
that we are distributing, and it makes it look like every State is
getting less money. That is simply not true.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the point I was trying
to make is that there is not a great discrepancy between the amount
that the States are currently getting under the NEA programs and the
amount that I understand the gentleman proposes to make available under
his amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia [Mr.
Moran].
Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the
Ehlers amendment because it is designed to gut the NEA.
The National Association of State Arts Agencies, which is the
organization that represents the State arts agencies that would get
these block grants, is strongly opposed to the Ehlers amendment because
they know that it will not help them provide quality programs to young
people.

{time} 1100

These arts agencies benefit from NEA's experience and their
leadership in creating partnerships with schools and universities
across the country. They cannot do that on their own and certainly not
with the small amount of money they would get from the Ehlers proposal.
Think about this. Under the Ehlers proposal, each school board would
get about $3,000, or $1 per child. That is not going to work. It is
almost laughable. No wonder that they oppose it.
Further, this amendment requires the Department of Education to
create a new bureaucracy to administer the program. DOE does not have
any competitive grant programs by subject area now. NEA has the staff
expertise. DOE does not.
Let us not pretend that a vote for the Ehlers amendment represents a
commitment to arts in this country. These State art agencies rely upon
Federal leadership and direct funding of national initiatives to
attract private, corporate, and foundation support, especially from
funders who can be encouraged to provide matching support. That is why
the major corporations have already told us they will not fill this
vacuum.
But right now we are getting about $12 in nonfederal funding for
every dollar that the NEA provides. That is what is working. It is seed
money. It will not be seed money under this proposal.
Mr. Chairman, I strongly urge my colleagues to defeat this amendment,
because this amendment is not what the State art agencies want and it
is certainly not what our country needs.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from
California [Mr. Hunter].
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman for his
excellent amendment and just to answer a few of the questions that have
been raised. First, why have we had this incredible debate over the
last number of years?
It is not whether or not we spend the money, but in essence it has
been who spends the money. We have had people in the NEA here in
Washington, for whatever reason, who have disbursed money in a way that
has embarrassed this House. We have had the horror stories of people
handing out $10 bills to illegal aliens on the international border on
the basis that that is an art project that shows the contribution of
illegal aliens to the U.S. economy. We have had the desecration of the
crucifix, these famous cases where absolute obscenity has been funded
with U.S. taxpayer dollars, and the taxpayers do not like that.
This amendment does exactly the right thing. It eliminates the NEA,
and that is the problem, the people who spend the money. But it does
spend some money in a way that we all agree money should be spent, and
that is that it gives it to kids. It sends money, most of the money, to
the art classes in our grade schools, grammar schools and high schools
throughout this country.
Pictures like this one, this was a picture from the district of the
gentleman from California [Mr. Thomas] done by Christopher Suniga from
North High School in his district. This represents, and we all see, the
great representation and manifestation of the talent of our kids when
we walk the hallway from the Cannon Building over here to the Capitol
to vote. We see wonderful art. We see all these budding artists who are
being taught great art in their classes.
We have had art classes in schools for hundreds of years in this
country. What this money will do is go to those kids, go to those
classes. If the gentleman says, ``Well, a dollar a student isn't going
to do any good,'' I say it is going to do a lot more than handing out
$10 bills to illegal aliens at the international border as some kind of
a fuzzy-headed art project. We are not going to give the money to aging
hippies anymore to desecrate the crucifix or do other strange things.
We are going to give it to our kids, our 10 and 12 and 14 and 16-year-
old kids who have talent, who want to develop that talent.
Lastly, it is going to give it to the kids on a per capita basis.
That means, I say to my great friends from New York who have gotten 25
percent of the money over the years, all the States are going to get an
equal amount of money based on their population, based on the number of
kids they have who need to develop this talent.
This is a great amendment. It eliminates the NEA, and it funds art
where we really should fund it, and that is with our children. I thank
the gentleman for offering this amendment.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks].
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Illinois [Mr.
Yates], who over the years has been such a strong defender of the
National Endowment for the Arts, for yielding me this time.
Mr. Chairman, I want to say to my friends on both sides of the aisle,
do not be fooled by the Ehlers amendment. The intent, as the gentleman
from California just stated, is to eliminate the NEA and to try to give
cover to a few Members in providing money to State arts councils and
back to the schools. The State arts councils say, ``We don't want the
money. We think this is a mistake. Killing the Endowment, our partner,
is a mistake.''
I must tell Members that over the years, and I have served on this
committee for 21 years and I have watched the NEA, we have made some
improvements. The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula], when he was the
ranking member, insisted on language. I worked with him on that
language to make certain that we got quality funding by the NEA. Out of
100,000 grants, 50 have been controversial. When it comes to the arts,
that is not a big deal.
I want to say to my Republican friends, many of which have joined
with the gentleman from New York [Mr. Lazio] in signing a letter to the
leadership on this issue, this is our test vote. This is our
opportunity to say whether we are for the Endowment or

[[Page H5144]]

whether we are against the Endowment. I think a showing defeating the
Ehlers amendment is the right thing to do. Then we can move on and deal
with the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Endowment has worked well. I can tell my colleagues from the
State of Washington's perspective, in 1977 we received 3 challenge
grants. It had more to do with developing the arts in Washington State
and in Seattle than any other thing. The work over the years with the
Endowment has been good and positive. Jane Alexander has been an
outstanding leader at the National Endowment for the Arts.
Again, this is a bad amendment. It is nothing but a cover for those
people who want to have it both ways. I hope the House will reject it
and let us go on and move forward.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, first of all I would simply respond, those
who know me well know I do not try to fool anyone and this amendment is
not intended to fool anyone.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania
[Mr. Goodling], the chairman of the authorizing committee.
(Mr. GOODLING asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Chairman, as chairman of the authorizing committee
with jurisdiction over NEA, I would like to make a few comments about
my understanding of the future of NEA.
At the outset, I would note that over the years, nothing associated
with the NEA has ever been easy. There are always competing factions
with strong views. In fact, because of these strongly held views, 1993
was the last year the NEA was authorized and for the past few years it
has been continued on a year-to-year basis only by virtue of the
appropriations process. In 1995, my committee did vote out, with some
bipartisan help, an authorization to phase it out over a 3-year period.
However, the leadership did not see fit to bring that to the floor of
the House.
Now we have before us a rule which would allow the Ehlers amendment,
block grant amendment, which is authorizing legislation to be attached
to the appropriations bill. I would have preferred that they wait
before moving authorizing legislation on this bill. However, it is my
understanding that the authorizing committee will be permitted to work
its will, according to the majority leader and the chairman of the
appropriations Subcommittee on Interior.
Here is my understanding of how it will happen. Assuming the Ehlers
amendment is adopted and goes to conference, the Committee on Education
and the Workforce will work its will through the normal authorizing
process in developing an arts-related bill over the next several weeks.
It is my hope that the bill will be promptly reported from the
committee prior to the end of September before the conference is held,
and we will fill in all the details as far as what the bill will do.
Thereafter, the bill would be made available to the Interior
conferees as a clear statement of the authorizing committee's views on
the future of NEA. My understanding is the chairman of the Subcommittee
on Interior will ensure that the authorizing committee's bill becomes
the official position of the House in conference.
I do want to point out that I had a letter some months ago from Ms.
Alexander, concerned that one of my subcommittees was doing a witch-
hunt. I assured her that would not happen. However, I asked her to do
what I did. We appreciate in my area the money we get for the York
Symphony Orchestra, a very small amount but we appreciate what we get.
However, I asked her to do what I did. I looked at ``Watermelon Woman''
in its entirety, I looked at ``Sex Is'' in its entirety, and I asked
her to do the same and then report back to me and tell me what it is I
missed, because I am sure I must have missed something, there must have
been some reason for tax dollars to be used for those two films. As
yet, I have not had a response.
I have long believed that the normal protocol of deferring to the
authorizing committee is the way to handle these matters. With the
understanding I have with the subcommittee chair and with our
leadership, I will support the action that is being taken today.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds in order to ask
the gentleman a question. Do I understand the gentleman correctly that
if the Ehlers amendment passes, he will then activate his committee in
order to pass an arts bill?
Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. YATES. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
Mr. GOODLING. The gentleman is correct.
Mr. YATES. Suppose Ehlers does not pass. Would the gentleman
nevertheless activate his committee?
Mr. GOODLING. We probably will run out of time, because it will not
become an emergency.
Mr. YATES. In other words, the activating of the gentleman's
committee will depend upon passage of the Ehlers amendment?
Mr. GOODLING. The gentleman is correct.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro].
Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, we have the chance today to uphold a long
and a proud Federal commitment to culture and to humanity in the United
States. But we can only maintain strong national support for the arts
by rejecting block grants and restoring funding for the National
Endowment for the Arts.
NEA opponents might make my colleagues think that the NEA budget is
colossal, but NEA funds are 0.01 percent of the budget, a tiny amount
of money. Eliminating the NEA would not balance our budget, but it
would bankrupt an essential element of our Nation's culture and
artistic heritage. In fact, Mr. Chairman, it turns us back to the Dark
Ages.
Providing a small amount of money for the arts through the NEA is a
catalyst for local, State, and private arts support. It ensures that
small communities as well as large can enjoy American treasures in
literature, painting, film, and the theater.
A small amount of NEA seed money has helped Connecticut's arts
thrive. We saw the results this summer and last summer with performers
from around the world who came to New Haven for the Second Annual
International Festival of Arts and Ideas. The nonprofit arts employed
more than 17,000 people in Connecticut and generated more than $1
billion for the State's economy in 1 year.
The NEA ensures that the arts are enjoyed not only by the affluent in
large cities but by the less well off in small towns. National grants
are efficient. They allow exhibits and performers to travel to places.
Even a small community that cannot afford a symphony can still enjoy a
traveling orchestra's music.
NEA grants have had a positive effect across this Nation. One
example: 3 grants benefited 140 small communities in all parts of this
country. A grant to the Spanish Repertory Theater in New York enabled
the company to tour Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Illinois, Texas, New
Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin. If funds are block
granted to the States, these kinds of traveling exhibits will be much
harder to fund and to coordinate. The National Assembly of State Arts
Agencies opposes block grants. Let us not return to the Dark Ages.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Florida [Mrs. Fowler].
(Mrs. FOWLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend her
remarks.)
Mrs. FOWLER. Mr. Chairman, as a strong supporter of the arts, I want
to add my voice to the others raised in support of the Ehlers-Hunter
amendment. While this amendment would eliminate the NEA, it would not
eliminate Federal funding for the arts. Instead, it would block grant
Federal arts funds to allow communities, not bureaucrats in Washington,
DC, to decide what kinds of projects are appropriate for funding in
their areas. In light of the many questionable projects funded by the
NEA in recent years, I think this is a very appropriate solution.
Under this proposal, more money will be provided for arts education
in schools so that students will have access to art, whether it be
going to a symphony or having an artist visit

[[Page H5145]]

their school. In many of my rural communities, they just do not have
the resources to provide these kinds of opportunities for their young
students. This amendment addresses that situation and will be very
beneficial to the youth of America, because the arts expand the mind
and heart, they stimulate creativity and they encourage creative self-
expression.
Mr. Chairman, I encourage support of the Ehlers-Hunter amendment.

{time} 1115

Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds.
Again I return to the statement by the gentleman from Pennsylvania,
the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. If I
understand him correctly, he finds fault with the Ehlers amendment
because he proposes, if the Ehlers amendment is successful and passes,
he is going to call his committee in order to pass a bill that is more
appropriate that he can turn over to the conferees, rather than the
Ehlers amendment itself. If the Ehlers amendment fails, he said, he
will not have to do that.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York
[Mrs. Lowey].
Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Chairman, yesterday the Republican leadership voted
to kill the National Endowment for the Arts, and today unfortunately
they are dancing on its grave.
With all due respect to my colleague from Michigan, this amendment is
not a compromise, it is a sham. It will not undo the damage that will
be inflicted on communities across the Nation by eliminating the NEA.
We do not need a new bureaucracy at the Department of Education, a
new distribution system to support the arts. The NEA, particularly
under the leadership of Jane Alexander, already has the expertise and a
proven record of getting the job done.
Let me remind my colleagues that out of more than 112,000 NEA-funded
grants over the past 32 years, only 45 are controversial. That is less
than four one-hundredths of 1 percent of all grants. Let us not throw
the baby out with the bath water simply because a few grants years ago
were controversial.
As I mentioned yesterday, this battle is not about defending the
values of mainstream America. This is about pandering to Pat Robertson
and the Christian Coalition. The assault on the arts, on cultural
expression itself, is an outrage, and it must be defeated.
One of the standards by which we judge a civilized society is the
support it provides for the arts. In comparison to other industrialized
nations, the United States falls woefully behind in this area, even
with a fully funded NEA.
But let us be honest. This is not a fight over money. The leadership
wants to eliminate the NEA because they are afraid of artistic
expression in a free society. Polls overwhelmingly show that the
American public supports Federal funding for the arts because students,
artists, musicians, teachers, orchestras, theaters, dance companies
across the country benefit from the NEA support. For many Americans,
whether they live in the suburbs or cities or rural areas, the NEA is
critical in making the arts affordable and accessible.
Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to defeat the Ehlers-Hunter
amendment. Preserve the NEA.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I simply point out that if we had a better distribution
mechanism that was not so controversial, we would probably have much
more money to distribute to the arts than we do now.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr.
Hoekstra].
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank my colleague for yielding this
time. As chairman of the oversight committee that has responsibility
for the National Endowment for the Arts, we have done oversight work,
and the reason I am supporting my colleague's amendment today is
because I believe it addresses the worst abuses that we have uncovered
in the National Endowment for the Arts. It does not address them all,
but it addresses the worst ones.
What are they? As this amendment does, it takes away the $20 million
in administrative overhead that the National Endowment spends each and
every year, $20 million to distribute an additional $80 million. That
is an unreasonable cost.
Where does the money go? The National Endowment for the Arts, as an
example, has spent $21,000 per employee on a computer system. Not bad.
The disappointing thing is that computer system still is not up and
running and does not even do e-mail.
The second abuse that this program deals with is the distribution of
funds. I do not think this House would ever develop a program from
scratch that would ensure that 143 congressional districts get no money
directly from the program. We would never develop a program that sends
25 percent of the funds to one State. This amendment assures that we
will equitably distribute funds throughout the country.
And the third thing that this amendment does is it moves
decisionmaking for the local arts programs to where those decisions can
be best made, where they will be supported by the local community,
where they will be supported by the American public, moving
decisionmaking for arts projects back to the State level, and the
money, the additional funds, are moved into arts education for our
kids.
This is a great program, this is a good amendment, it does not go
exactly where we need to go, but it moves the program in the right
direction and handles the worst abuses for an ineffective bureaucracy.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Wisconsin [Mr. Obey].
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, the amendment before us is not even a serious
legislative effort. It is very clear what is going on here is simply
``Operation Cover Your Tail.'' We have had a lot of people in this
House who promised to vote for funding the arts, but yesterday they
chose to assassinate the arts behind the cover of the Ehlers amendment.
Mr. Chairman, this is a smokescreen amendment, and I think the
comments of the Chair of the Committee on Education and the Workforce
indicate just how unreal this proposal is as an alternative. What he
really indicated by his remarks is that this is just a time filler. It
is a device by which to kill the National Endowment for the Arts, and
then they figure out later how they are going to explain it to the
folks back home and come up with some other scheme to cover what they
have done.
What he said in response to the comments of the gentleman from
Illinois [Mr. Yates] is, ``Well, if this amendment passes, then what
we'll do is, we'll pull our committee together and we will really then
figure out what it is we really want to do, and then we will send it on
to the conferees.'' When he was asked would he do that same thing if
the Ehlers amendment is not adopted, he said no.
That indicates that this Ehlers amendment is nothing but a device by
which you accomplish the assassination of the National Endowment for
the Arts. That is all it is, and it just seems to me that that is not
what a majority of Members in both parties in this House want to do.
Now I have served, when I first came to the Congress I served, on
this subcommittee as one of my first assignments. I remember for years
the wonderful bipartisan support that we had for the Endowment. People
now complain about a couple of the grants that the Endowment was
involved in because they say that they produced art that is not
consistent with American values. There is no question about that, and I
agree with that. But they have had about a 99 or 97 percent success
rate.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to meet the Member of Congress who has
that high a performance by any standard, no matter who would determine
that standard.
Let us be very clear about it. The arts community is against the
Ehlers amendment. The State arts agencies who would receive a very
large share of the funds under this amendment do not want this
amendment. And the idea that we are going to turn this over as an
orphan program to the Department of Education, which at least a third
of my colleagues on that side of the aisle have been trying to abolish,
indicates just what a slapdash operation this really is.

[[Page H5146]]

So it seems to me if my colleagues are serious, if they want to cast
a vote that will keep continued pressure on to resurrect a meaningful
arts program, they will vote this down and they will insist that the
committee in conference resurrect the National Endowment.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I would simply observe this amendment is definitely not
a smokescreen. I have never smoked in my life.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California [Mr.
Horn].
(Mr. HORN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. HORN. Mr. Speaker, I commend the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula]
and the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Yates]. Over the years they have
done a valiant job with this budget. I happen to have a hundred percent
record of arts support. I voted against the rule yesterday. I think the
National Endowment was not treated fairly in the rule, and that is why
I voted against this.
Now those of us who believe that the Federal Government has a role in
the arts, the Ehlers proposal is the one thing we have to show that
this House cares for Federal support of the arts. Let us forget about
some of the administrative machinery right now. I think the gentleman
from Michigan [Mr. Ehlers] is on the right track. That does not mean we
have every dot dotted and every I dotted and so forth.
It is wrong to deny this House a vote, and this is the chance to vote
and show our support for the arts. This is the one opportunity we will
have on this bill going into negotiations with the Senate. They might
well succeed in having the NEA continued, and I would support that. But
I think we have to go in with support of the Federal Government for the
arts.
The gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Ehlers] formerly has 30 percent of
those funds going to the State arts councils. I am quite familiar with
the California State Arts Council which does an outstanding job. Sixty
percent would be going to public schools. Only 3 percent on
administration, not 20 percent.
This proposal does not pretend to be perfect. I think universities
with outreach efforts in inner cities and public schools need to be
supported.
Revenue sharing that we had in this country between 1973 and 1983
worked. Who did not like it? The Washington lobbyists. Who did not like
it? The staff on the Hill and people that had been here too long on the
Hill.
This program will work. Give it a chance. Vote for the Ehlers
proposal. Vote for Federal support of the arts.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.
I have the greatest respect for my friend, the gentleman from
California [Mr. Horn], but I should like to point out to him that in
the years I have been in the Congress and in the number of times that I
have been in conferences with the Senate, I have gone through those
conferences with bills that had no appropriations on programs from the
House and appropriations that came from the Senate that had to be
reconciled, and I suspect that the Senate will approve an appropriation
for NEA.
Mr. Chairman, I think that we would be better off going to the Senate
with a vote like we had yesterday on NEA, 217 to 216, showing that the
House still wanted to have NEA rather than clouding the issue with an
amendment like the Ehlers amendment.
Nevertheless I respect the position the gentleman has taken.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman
from North Carolina [Mr. Hefner].
(Mr. HEFNER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks).
Mr. HEFNER. Mr. Chairman, I would be the last person in this bill to
defend the obscene art that is the controversy about the funding. But
to me, I am a bit troubled; I am still smarting from the vote yesterday
on the rule.
The gentleman here, who I served with for 22 years, and there is not
a finer man that has ever served in this body than the gentleman from
Illinois, [Mr. Sid Yates], a man of integrity who has had many awards
from the arts community, and the Committee on Rules waived points of
order. This is legislation on an appropriation; make no mistake about
that. They waived the points of order to allow this amendment to come
up. They denied the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Yates] the same
courtesy to offer his amendment up or down on NEA funding.

{time} 1130

This is wrong. My friend, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula], who I
served with on the Subcommittee on Military Construction for many, many
years, and we have saved this country a million dollars in funds for
our military and quality of life, but to make a rule to where they
waive the points of order to allow an amendment such as this, and they
deny a man who has been in this House for many, many years, a man of
integrity, it is just not right.
Let me make one other point. All the abuses that have been in the
grants and what has taken place, let me just kind of draw an analogy
here. I serve on the Committee on National Security. We had some
scandals in our academies, in the Naval Academy, in West Point and the
others. We do not close the schools down. We try to correct them, which
is what we have done in this area.
We have tremendous cost overruns on weapons systems. We do not quit
spending money for defense. We try to fix it. We do not try to kill it
in a roundabout way and allow an unfair rule on this House floor to
responsible Members that have given their lives in service to their
countrymen here on this floor. That is not democracy.
Mr. Chairman, this is not right. I would like to ask the gentleman
from Michigan [Mr. Ehlers], if I could, on most of these amendments
that come up that call for block grants, they pass out literature that
says how much each district in the country will get. Do Members have
such a printout that we could have, where I will know how much these
block grants we will get in the Eighth District in North Carolina, or
statewide, under block grants? Or have Members gone that far in
analyzing the block grants?
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. HEFNER. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Yes, I
do have a chart here. I have not distributed it. It is not by district,
because we do not know how the State agencies or how the State art
commissions would distribute on a per district basis, but I do have a
breakdown by State of how much would be given to each State for the use
of their arts commission to distribute and how much would be given for
their schools to distribute.
Mr. HEFNER. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I would just make this
final point. Living in rural North Carolina, my kids were in grade
school, and nothing pleased them any more than when the symphony or a
portion of the symphony from Charlotte or someplace came and performed
at their school.
It was the highlight of their day and the highlight of their week
when they could participate in something that they would not be able to
participate in otherwise. To me this is just an absolute tragedy when
we did not allow a vote, an up-and-down vote for my friend, the
gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Yates].
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I would simply observe that under the NEA 25 percent of
the funding went to one State. There was a lot of talk about the NEA,
about distributing funds to the little people. Our program does a lot
better job at distributing funds to the little people than the NEA has
done.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri [Mr.
Blunt].
(Mr. BLUNT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, as we look for alternatives today, I want to
commend the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Ehlers, and the gentleman from
California, Mr. Duncan Hunter. My freshmen colleague the gentleman from
Kansas, Mr. Jerry Moran, a couple of months ago began to mention this
concept to me as a concept that he thought would work.
We are looking to new and better ways to do things. Clearly Members
are

[[Page H5147]]

not going to privatize or turn back to the States the obligation to
defend the country, so we have to look for different ways to solve
problems, management problems in the Defense Department.
We are talking about an agency that spends 20 percent of its money
just to administer its programs, and according to their own inspector
general's report, as of March 31, 1996, 63 percent of the project costs
were not reconcilable to the accounting records, 79 percent had
inadequate documentation, 53 percent failed to engage independent
auditors, even though their grant requirement absolutely required that.
We are not debating today whether or not to spend money on the arts.
The key here is not about spending money on the arts. We are for the
first time really significantly debating where is the better place to
make this decision. Should this decision be made in Washington, or can
this decision be made better in the States?
We got an opportunity to look to the States. The State art councils
have done a good job distributing the State money. Thirty percent of
the NEA-distributed money has gone to six cities in America. In the
Seventh District of Missouri that I represent, of the money distributed
by the NEA, even though our proportionate share would be a quarter of a
million dollars, we get back $5,000. The State arts councils are going
to do a better job in distributing this money. They are going to do a
better job administratively in spending it.
I urge support of this amendment, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from New York [Mr. Nadler].
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to
me.
Mr. Chairman, this amendment is nothing but a smokescreen to hide the
actions taken by the House leadership to prevent the vote on the
amendment offered by the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Yates] to restore
funding to the NEA. This amendment was cooked up in the middle of the
night. It has not been considered by any committee nor had the benefit
of any public hearing. It would effectively waste the $80 million it
appropriates with virtually no benefit to the arts.
For 30 years, Mr. Chairman, the NEA has brought art and culture to
those who would not otherwise have access do it. Before the NEA there
were 58 orchestras in the country. Today there are more than 1,000.
Before the NEA there were 37 professional dance companies. Now there
are 300. Before the NEA, only 1 million people went to the theater in
this country every year. Today more than 55 million do. Without the
NEA, we will revert to the old situation where the arts were not
accessible to most people in this country.
But this amendment eliminates the NEA. It would instead distribute
$600 or $1,000 to every school district. $600 for an entire school
district? What use could they make of that? The amendment is so
restrictive, there is no guarantee, no assurance it would continue our
support for symphonies, operas, concerts in the park, local Shakespeare
festivals and touring dance and theater groups that benefit entire
communities, not only schoolchildren. Even the State arts agencies that
would directly receive 30 percent of the block grants strongly oppose
the amendment.
The amendment does not recognize the purpose of a national arts
agency, and therefore it tends to set up a distribution system that
sounds fair but in reality is completely unworkable.
The amendment will eliminate funding for the traveling theater and
dance groups that visit small towns and communities all across the
Nation, because if States control these funds they will have no
incentive to support theater or dance groups that travel to other
States outside their borders.
And the amendment will distribute an equal portion of Federal money
to every region. But we all know this makes no sense. Mr. Chairman,
should New York City get the same amount of money for wheat subsidies
as towns in Kansas and Iowa, even though we grow no wheat in New York
City? Of course not. Some regions have more wheat farmers and others
have more artists, and Federal funds should be distributed accordingly.
In the end, wheat subsidies help consumers nationwide, and NEA grants
bring excellent art produced by the country's finest artists to people
all over the country.
I hope it is very clear that the amendment is a fraud, designed only
to create a political fig leaf for those whose constituents will not
appreciate their votes yesterday to kill the NEA.
Do not be deceived. Vote against this amendment, and wait for the
Senate and the President to rescue the arts in this country from the
folly of this House.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the
gentleman from New York [Mr. Gilman].
(Mr. GILMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Ehlers-Hunter
amendment eliminating the NEA and block granting funding and giving
control to the local school boards. I urge my colleagues to vote in
opposition to the Ehlers-Hunter measure. I thank the gentleman for
yielding.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the Ehlers-Hunter NEA
amendment. Though I support the efforts of both of my distinguished
colleagues in trying to formulate a workable compromise that would fund
the arts, I believe it is too little and too late.
I strongly support the vital need to continue funding for the
National Endowment for the Arts, and it is distressing that this
amendment terminates this important agency.
Over the past 30 years, our quality of life has been improved by the
National Endowment for the Arts. Support for the arts acknowledges our
Nation's commitment to freedom of expression, one of the basic
principles upon which our Nation is founded. Cutting funding for the
arts will deny citizens this essential freedom, and detract from the
quality of life in our Nation.
The President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities released the
report entitled Creative America, which makes several recommendations
about the need to strengthen support for cultural in our country. It
applauds our American spirit, and observes that an energetic cultural
life contributes to a strong democracy. This report not only highlights
our Nation's unique tradition of philanthropy, but also mentions that
the baby-boomer generation, and new American corporations, are not
fulfilling this standard of giving. It saddens me that something as
important as the arts, which has been so integral to our American
heritage, is being cast aside by our younger generations as something
of little value.
By block granting funding for the arts and fragmenting the NEA, our
Nation would be the first among cultured nations to eliminate the arts
from our Nation's priorities. As chairman of the International
Relations Committee, I recognize the importance of the arts on an
international level, in helping to foster a common appreciation of
history and culture that are so essential to humanity. If we eliminate
the NEA we will be erasing an essential part of our culture.
Moreover, this measure which block grants funding for the arts,
places most of the authority for distribution of art funding to local
school boards, virtually eliminating a significant Federal role.
Accordingly, I urge my colleagues to vote no on the Ehlers-Hunter
amendment and instead work with our colleagues in the conference to
provide full funding for the NEA.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Hawaii [Mrs. Mink].
(Mrs. MINK of Hawaii asked and was given permission to revise and
extend her remarks.)
Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member for
yielding time to me.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Ehlers-Hunter amendment. I
am deeply offended by the subterfuge which it represents as a backdoor
way of putting money into the Department of Education, frequently the
target of the majority side of the aisle.
What offends me more than that, however, is that we stand here every
day preaching the rule of law, where we insist that for Americans, that
there is an even application of the rule of law and that it ought to be
abided by.
This House has rules that ought to be abided by, and the rule says
that you cannot authorize on an appropriation bill. On that basis they
have ruled out of order the ranking member's amendment to restore
funding. Well, that is fine. If they are going to enforce the rule of
law and apply that to the gentleman's amendment, that is fine.
But on the other hand, through a manipulation of the rules of this
House, they have allowed an amendment to come forth which does not even
belong in this appropriation bill. It goes to another committee on
appropriations. It

[[Page H5148]]

has to do with funding of the Department of Education.
If Members do not believe me, they should remind themselves about the
words of the chairman of the Committee on Economic and Educational
Opportunities, who said on the floor of this House that if the Ehlers
amendment passed his committee will be put to work to write the
legislation.
Mr. Chairman, if that is not back door subterfuge, I do not know what
is. If we have problems in explaining what we do to our constituents, I
hope Members can go back to their constituents and explain what we are
doing today.
The annihilation of the National Endowment for the Arts is a very,
very serious act, prompted by a few objections to maybe less than 50
art programs or projects among millions. If we are offended by these
things, make the rules tougher, but do not do away with the symbol of
national support for the idea of creativity, which is the essence of
free expression protected by our Constitution.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I would simply remark that the rules of the House
provide that a waiver protecting from a point of order applies only if
the chairman of the authorization committee authorizes it. That is what
happened in this case. So the rules of the House were followed.
Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Arkansas [Mr. Hutchinson].
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the rural States in mid-
America, I speak in favor of the Ehlers-Hunter amendment for a number
of reasons. First, the status quo funding of the NEA results not in art
education, but in art arrogance. Do we really need a centralized,
federalized ministry on the arts to tell the people of America what is
good and what is not good art, what does and does not deserve funding?
Second, the present philosophy of the NEA does not accomplish its
original mission of providing art education to underserved areas; not
the big cities, but underserved areas. Rather, Washington control
results in mismanagement and a lack of common sense in art funding.
The Ehlers amendment gets the money to the State art agencies, which
do a good job, and it also for the first time provides funding for art
programs in schools. I urge my colleagues to support a commonsense
approach to arts by voting for art education and not art arrogance.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.
Mr. Chairman, I take issue with my friend, the gentleman from
Michigan [Mr. Ehlers] when he said that they observed the rules of the
House when the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce
gave his consent. I gathered the impression that the chairman of the
Committee on Education and the Workforce did not give his consent. He
came down in the well of the House and said that if the gentleman's
amendment passes, he is going to put his committee to work to pass a
bill that means something, and then turn it over to the conferees.
What happened, of course, was that the Committee on Rules waived all
points of order with respect to the gentleman's amendment, which
included the rule that required the approval of the chairman of the
legislative committee. That is what happened in this particular case.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Jersey
[Mrs. Roukema].
(Mrs. ROUKEMA asked and was given permission to revise and extend her
remarks.)
Mrs. ROUKEMA. Mr. Chairman, I do not question the good faith effort
of our colleague, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Ehlers], but I do
have to say I rise in strong opposition to this proposal. This is no
way to run a railroad, and it is certainly no way to legislate. This is
not the time nor is the appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior
bill the place to undertake a complete overhaul of our arts funding
process. This is a job for the authorization committee, the Committee
on Education and the Workforce.
Mr. Chairman, I speak with some authority on this because I have been
a member of that committee, and also a leader for years in reforming
the NEA, so I think I have some understanding of what is involved here.

{time} 1145

Regardless of my commitment to the NEA, the point here today is that
we are about to establish an entirely new program that we know next to
nothing about. There are a lot of questions here. I do not have time
too go into all of them, but I have a list of questions here that are
not answered. And some of the answers that are not in the legislation,
proposed legislation, are said to be for the committee report.
Is that any way to legislate? That is ridiculous. But without going
into all of the questions, aside from real serious questions about how
the funding formula is distributed, I want to ask my colleagues at
least two questions:
Will the bill be written in the conference if the committee of
jurisdiction, as the chairman has said, does not act? Are we handing
that over to a conference committee? I doubt it.
What will it mean in terms of the conference committee in the Senate
having worked its will on the NEA? Will it undermine that effort? There
are questions on both sides of this issue.
To my Republican colleagues, particularly those who have sworn
allegiance to eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, is not
anyone here concerned that this proposal creates a new bureaucracy in
the Department of Education?
Those are but two of about 10 important questions that are left
unanswered in this procedure.
Mr. Chairman, I include for the Record the list of questions to which
I referred:

Addition to Statements--Questions About Ehlers

Mr. Yates cannot offer his amendment because the NEA has
not been reauthorized by the Education Committee since 1993.
Should we be approving here a 28-page amendment that
substitutes for the Committee's authorization process?
Has anyone seen the formula for distribution? If not, when
will we see it? Before conference? Before final passage?
Before enactment?
Will the bill be written in conference if the committee of
jurisdiction doesn't act?
Do we know how this will affect each State?
Many of my Republican colleagues have sworn allegiance to
the cause of eliminating the U.S. Department of Education.
Isn't anyone concerned that in this proposal we are handing a
new $80 million bureaucracy to DOE?
What experience does the DOE have in operating an arts
program?
There are about 16,000 local school boards across the
Nation. Under Ehlers, each one would get about $3,000 each.
It seems to me that the paperwork involved in this program
will cost each district more than $3,000. Is it worth it?
The Ehlers amendment contains a 3 percent funding figure
for administrative costs? Whose administrative costs? Will
the States get any of this? If not, why is this not one of
those famous ``unfunded mandates'' we so strongly oppose in
this House?

I recommend a ``no'' vote on Ehlers.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Connecticut [Mrs. Johnson].
Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, Government support of the
arts has created access to the arts for millions of Americans and has
provided tremendous economic and educational benefits to our Nation.
Just as the Department of Education embodies our belief that
mastering a disciplined body of knowledge is essential to exercising
freedom with responsibility, so the NEA embodies our national
commitment to the arts and our recognition that creativity is
absolutely essential to an entrepreneurial economy in a visionary
democracy.
It is no surprise that students who have 4 more years of art
education have SAT scores that are significantly higher than those that
do not. Further, arts moneys have been the most successful economic
development program in our great cities.
I rise at this time in support of the Ehlers amendment because it
significantly restores funding for the arts while the underlying bill
slashes funding 90 percent. It also recognizes that there is a need for
a Federal role in funding the arts.
The Ehlers amendment is therefore better than the underlying bill.
However, it is dangerous to make significant changes in any Government
agency without hearings and this amendment has some serious problems.
It

[[Page H5149]]

eliminates any significant Federal role in supporting unique museums,
theaters, symphonies, and dance troops that are institutions of
national significance and value. Also, by sending the education dollars
directly to the schools, it destroys the powerful partnerships that
have emerged and been developed between the great museums like
Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum and local schools. These partnerships
provide a totally different and higher order of arts experience to our
children than could any public school arts department.
Mr. Chairman, this amendment sends the House into conference, and
this is where I disagree respectfully with my colleague, the gentleman
from Illinois [Mr. Yates]. It sends the House bill into conference with
far more dollars in it than the base bill and a clear message of
support for a Federal role. In conference I would hope the NEA
structures prevail and this bill goes to hearing as part of the
reauthorization process.
Government support of the arts at the Federal, State, and local
levels has created access to the arts for millions of Americans, and
has provided tremendous economic and educational benefits to our
Nation. Funding from the National Endowment of the Arts [NEA] directly
or indirectly supports thousands of programs that bring the arts to
urban and rural communities, with local decisionmakers selecting
cultural activities of importance to their communities. NEA-supported
arts education programs open the doors of museums and symphonies to
thousands of students and bring unique arts experiences into the
classrooms.
Just as the Department of Education embodies our belief that
mastering a disciplined body of knowledge is essential to exercising
freedom with responsibility, so the NEA embodies our national
commitment to the arts, and our recognition that creativity is
absolutely essential to an entrepreneurial economy and a visionary
democracy.
It is no surprise that students who have 4 or more years of art
education have SAT scores that are significantly higher than those who
do not. Direct and indirect funding from the NEA is essential to
continuing and developing quality art education that will build the
skilled minds and hands needed to shape our future.
The economic impact of the arts is significant and especially
dramatic in our great cities, large and small. Of all the urban
economic development programs, arts funding has proven to be among the
most important of our great cities. An investment equal to 38 cents per
American, one one-hundredth of 1 percent of our total Federal budget,
stimulates 18 times that amount from other sources. Nationally,
nonprofit arts generate $37 billion in economic activity, support 1.3
million jobs, and return $3.4 billion in Federal income taxes. The arts
are good business.
I rise in support of the Ehlers amendment because it restores
significant funding for the arts and recognizes the Federal
responsibility to fund the arts, while the underlying bill slashes
funding by 90 percent. The Ehlers amendment, therefore, is better than
the alternative--which provides virtually no funding at all. However,
it is dangerous to make significant changes in any government agency
without hearings and this amendment has some serious weaknesses. It
eliminates any significant Federal role in supporting the unique
museums, theaters, symphonies, and dance companies that are
institutions of national significance and value. Also, by sending the
education funding directly to the schools, it destroys the powerful
partnerships between great museums like Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum
and local partner schools. These partnerships provide totally different
and higher order arts experiences to our children than could be
provided by school arts departments alone.
Public Law 89-209, the law establishing the NEA, states: ``It is
necessary and appropriate for the federal government to help create and
sustain not only a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination
and inquiry, but also the material conditions facilitating the release
of this creative talent.'' I take that responsibility very seriously.
The arts are an integral part of our society and our economy. The
American people recognize the importance of the arts. Seventy-nine
precent of them support a government role in funding the arts. This
amendment sends the House bill into conference with more dollars than
the base bill and clear support for a Federal role in arts funding. In
conference we should retain current the NEA structures and send this
thoughtful amendment to hearing as part of the reauthorization process.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute to repeat what I
said with respect to the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn]. I think
that if we went into conference with the Ehlers amendment, we would be
in a very weak position because the Senate, I am sure, will put an
appropriate amount of money in the bill. And it all depends on what my
good friend, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula], and I are able to
come up with in our negotiations with the Senate.
Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. YATES. I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.
Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, we have not been able to
reauthorize the NEA legislation either under Democratic leadership or
Republican leadership. It is my hope that the conference committee will
take the old language, and then we could go into the authorizing
process this year and bring together some of the interests of
conservatives who have opposed NEA but many of whom do not oppose some
Federal funding of the arts in our Nation and really think through how
do we get a reauthorization that meets the needs of all of us. But that
is a separate issue. I think in the conference committee we could go
forward.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I respectfully suggest the vote yesterday
indicated that conservatives who are opposed to it would have been
outvoted, had we had a chance to vote on NEA.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr.
Davis].
(Mr. DAVIS of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and
extend his remarks.)
Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to
this amendment. I rise in opposition because if something is not
broken, then there is no need to mend it. There is no need to fix it.
The fact of the matter is the NEA has, for a number of years, developed
tremendous outreach to the arts community all over America. Everybody
involved in the arts, they know. Everybody involved in the arts, they
are a part of. They know where the programs are. They know where the
funds need to go. They know the kind of activities that need to take
place. I believe, again, if it is not broke, do not fix it. I commend
my colleague from Illinois for having been a longtime guardian of these
programs. I stand with him and say, if it is not broke, do not fix it.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in objection to the Ehlers amendment. Under the
Ehlers amendment, the NEA would be eliminated as we know it. The Ehlers
amendment would appropriate $80 million in Federal funds to be
allocated as block grants. Under this proposal, 97 percent of the money
is to go directly to State arts councils and local school boards for
only school-based arts education programs.
Beyond monetary terms, this shift of 60 percent of the funds
allocated entirely toward schools, which serve primarily k-12 needs are
the funds that support institutions that promote lifelong learning,
such as museums, dance companies, theaters, outreach programs,
community-based programs, and folks arts are lost. These arts and
humanities programs that Americans have grown to know and love over the
years no longer will be funded.
This proposal means that a majority of Federal arts funding would not
be available for cultural organizations and some of their programs.
Important programs that enrich the lives of many across this Nation.
Although the State Arts Council may receive slightly more money, they
cannot possibly compensate for this loss. The 7^th
Congressional District of Illinois which I represent would lose over
$1.8 million overall based on fiscal year 1997 appropriations. This is
bad for Chicago, but more important it is bad for America. I say it is
bad for America because Americans come to Chicago.
There are numerous organizations that would be hurt by this proposal
in my district, fine institutions that people across this Nation
enjoy--such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Artist's
Coalition, the Chicago Dance Arts Coalition, Inc., Hubbard Street Dance
Chicago, Illinois Arts Council, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Museum of
Contemporary Art, Urban Gateways, and the YMCA's USA Literature Special
projects would no longer receive their much-needed NEA funds.
I join with my constituents, the State arts agencies and the mayors
across our great Nation that reflect the view of millions in my
opposition to the Ehlers amendment that greatly hinders our Nation's
commitment to the arts.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Michigan [Mr. Upton].
Mr. UPTON. Mr. Chairman, most of us here in this body and citizens
across

[[Page H5150]]

the country were offended with some of the arts that were funded by the
NEA in years past. We had a fellow colleague, Paul Henry, who led the
successful fight to stop much of that abuse of taxpayer money several
years ago. I am delighted that the gentleman from Michigan [Mr.
Ehlers], his successor, has followed that same trail.
Because we did not have an authorization, money could and was struck
for the NEA. That is a simple tact under the rules of the House. The
Ehlers amendment is a step in the right direction for allowing the
funding for the arts. No, the Ehlers amendment is not music to
everyone's ears. It does not fund symphonies and a number of worthwhile
organizations, museums that today are funded. I know that there are a
number of things that we need to correct in the future with those
things in mind.
But today we need to adopt the Ehlers amendment and we need to let
the Committee on Education and the Workforce reauthorize this very
valuable program for the future. The bottom line here is that we would
rather have something than nothing, and the Ehlers amendment is a good
step in the right direction. I would urge my colleagues to support this
measure.
The CHAIRMAN. The Chair would advise that the gentleman from Michigan
[Mr. Ehlers] has 6\1/4\ minutes remaining, and the gentleman from
Illinois [Mr. Yates] has 2\1/2\ minutes remaining and the right to
close.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished
gentleman from Delaware [Mr. Castle].
Mr. CASTLE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the arts but in strong
opposition to the Ehlers amendment which at its best is an untested way
of handling arts funding. The NEA is indeed a lightening rod. It has
some basic good ideas. I give them a lot of credit for that.
But this concept is less than 24 hours old at this point. It has not
been tested across the country. Virtually nobody really understands
what is in it. In addition, it is a travesty that we are not in this
body voting on NEA funding, which every single Member knows would be
reinstated to the exact amount it got last year if we were given that
opportunity, because of legislative process and procedures that has
been avoided. The bottom line is that most groups in this country that
I have been in touch with through fax, by telephone call, whatever, are
in opposition to this amendment. That goes all the way from the
Conference of Mayors to arts groups in general to business leaders to
State arts agencies, all of whom are saying this is not the way to
proceed.
So it is a dilemma for those of us who support the arts. I oppose the
Ehlers amendment. I believe that we must move ahead with good arts
funding by the Senate and by the White House.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
California [Mr. Bono].
(Mr. BONO asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks).
Mr. BONO. Mr. Chairman, I was not going to speak but I am sitting in
my office choking on the rhetoric that I am hearing on what a great
contribution the NEA is to the arts. I have been in the arts for 30
years. That has been my occupation. I know of no one in 30 years in the
arts that has been assisted by the NEA. I do not see where the NEA is
this amazing contribution to mankind and has brought all these artists
forward.
Furthermore, there is no equity as far as how artists are selected or
chosen. There is no system. There is no equity. And I would not qualify
and many of my colleagues that are artists, successful artists, would
not qualify today. So finally we have a system, the Ehlers amendment,
that would at least have a fairness as far as qualifying or as far as
assisting artists, and we are denying that and we are giving it to a
group. I wish Congress would stop thinking that they are experts on
everything. They certainly are not experts on art and they do not know
what they are talking about when they talk about the NEA.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from New
York [Mr. Boehlert].
(Mr. BOEHLERT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, despite a few mistakes, the National
Endowment for the Arts has worked and continues to work remarkably
well. It provides funds on the basis of excellence, not merely
population. That is not an elitism, that is the time-honored
conservative principle of giving money where it will be used most
effectively. Under the Ehlers plan, the distribution of funds on
population, every single State except one, every single State except
one loses money.
The discretionary grants are gone and the 37 percent distribution
formula means every State loses money. The only place that came out on
the plus side of the ledger is when you distribute money for students
and then you give them 90 cents apiece to buy crayons and construction
paper. Support the NEA.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds for a brief
response.
My good friend, the gentleman from New York, just made a statement
that every State loses. He is undoubtedly basing that on the NEA flier
that I mentioned earlier on, which was distributed and simply gave
inaccurate information. States do not lose. They in fact do gain.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman will state it.
Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman has suggested I gave
inaccurate information to the House. The gentleman has suggested that
the gentleman in the well has given inaccurate information to the
House. I would like the opportunity to correct that statement. How do I
get time to do that?
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Michigan may yield time as he sees
fit.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 15 seconds for a response to the
gentleman from New York [Mr. Boehlert].
Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, under the population aid formula, 37
percent distribution of funds, every State except Florida loses money
because we eliminate all discretionary spending.
Where you gain money, and it is marginal, is under the student aid
distribution formula, and that is about 90 cents a student, which will
allow them to buy crayons and construction paper.
Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, rather than continue that mini-debate, I
yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter].
(Mr. BEREUTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Ehlers
amendment. We have had problems with the NEA because a few artists want
to extend beyond what is acceptable with public funds.
We have had great success with the State arts councils. I want to
give them the funds they need to continue. There is a legitimate matter
of debate about the use of public funds for art, but I believe that in
a great civilization there has always been the use of public funds to
support the arts. America is such a great civilization.
I ask my colleagues to set aside their concerns and to help us move
to a substantial situation of providing assistance to our State arts
councils. Perhaps too much is allocated to the schools at the expense
of the State arts councils, but this Ehlers amendment is a valid
effort. I think it is important that we move in this direction. It is
the solution in the long term.
The national level will always be contentious. It is time to get the
money to the State arts councils. They have done an extraordinary job
in deciding how to spend their funds. I urge Members to support the
Ehlers amendment to expedite this process to the final solution.
The Ehlers amendments would replace the National Endowment for the
Arts (NEA) with a block grant program to the State art councils and
public school districts.
This Member has always been in favor of public funding for the arts.
Every great civilization has always had public support of the arts.
America is a great civilization and we should continue small but
reasonable Federal funding in this area.
This Member has great confidence in the State arts councils. For
example, there is no doubt that the Nebraska

[[Page H5151]]

Arts Council will make the right decisions regarding use of Federal
funds.
As we all know, the controversy surrounding the NEA is largely the
result of inappropriate funding decisions regarding pornographic or
obscene projects which have been the subject of strenuous objections by
many Members of Congress, including this Member. Because of the strong
public opposition to the NEA, the best way to ensure continued Federal
support of the arts is to send the money to the State art councils and
public schools for distribution. A vote for the Ehlers amendment is a
vote to support the arts.
In closing Mr. Chairman, this Member urges his colleagues to support
the arts by voting ``aye'' on the Ehlers amendment.

{time} 1200

Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I would simply reiterate the choice before us is very clear at this
point. This amendment, in spite of the accusations made against it, is
not a smoke screen, it is not trying to fool anyone. It is a simple
attempt at providing continued Federal funding for the arts, given the
fact that the House at this moment in time is not prepared to continue
the NEA.
So the issue is clear. Do we want to send a bill to the Senate that
has no NEA and no arts funding, or do we want to send a bill to the
Senate that has no NEA but does have continued arts funding?
The choice to me is very clear. Let us continue the Federal support
for the arts. Let us continue to provide funding for the arts through
the various State agencies that are available, through the arts
education programs at various States and that school districts have. I
believe it will be a more equitable distribution than we have had. It
certainly will be far less controversial, and I believe it will be
beneficial for the arts, for the people of this Nation who are
interested in the arts, and it will be beneficial for the students who
will be learning about the arts. I think it is a win-win situation.
I urge all Members of this body to forget partisan differences, to
forget the arguments about the NEA and say at this point in time the
best thing we can do is pass this amendment and send this bill to the
Senate with continued funding for the arts, and we will there, in
conference, resolve the issues about the future of the NEA. So I urge
all Members of this body, regardless of partisan differences, to vote
for this amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from
Georgia [Mr. Gingrich], the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend for yielding me this
time.
Let me just say I think the direction that the Ehlers amendment is
taking us is the right direction. Clearly, this is a new approach and a
new way of funding the arts at the Federal level. It indicates our
commitment to making sure that at local levels, local communities and
the States have resources for funding.
I wanted to say to my good friend from New York that I would
certainly urge, in conference, the chairman, the gentleman from Ohio
[Mr. Regula], who has been working in this direction for several years,
to work with him and anyone else to make sure that States actually do
have full funds. There is no question about whose list is right, whose
list is wrong. Our goal is to get funding to the States to have a
mechanism for the States to be able to help fund the arts in an
appropriate way under local leadership.
This is the only point I would make to our friends who are arguing so
passionately for the endowment to the arts: If one talks to the
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling], who I think is a very
reasonable and a very responsible person, he will advise that as
recently as this year he tried to get information out of the NEA,
defending certain films that they had granted, that he could not
defend. He could not defend why taxpayers were paying for them. He
could not understand what was the point of certain types of gratuitous
pornography and gratuitous violence in a way that made no sense. Yet we
want to find a way, with local communities, with local input, with
local involvement, to fund the arts.
So I think for those who care about the arts as opposed to the
National Endowment, this is actually going to take most of the
argument, most of the controversy, most of the irritation out of the
system and allow us to focus, instead, on how do we help the local
symphony, how do we help the local ballet, how do we help the local art
museum, and to do it in a way which allows us to build support for the
arts rather than engage in arguments over controversy.
I think it is an important step in the right direction. I commend the
gentleman from Michigan for his leadership and the gentleman from Ohio
for having organized it, and I believe this is the best way to have
funding for the arts at the local level, where it matters, so that
local communities can have the kinds of involvement and input they
should have.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the
distinguished gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi].
(Ms. PELOSI asked and was given permission to revise and extend her
remarks.)
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, I thank the most distinguished gentleman
for yielding me this time, and I rise in opposition to the Republican
assault on creativity in America and urge my colleagues to vote against
the Ehlers amendment.
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Ehlers
amendment. The past 24 hours have been sad and disappointing ones for
the House of Representatives, because the Republican leadership has
refused to allow the Ehlers amendment of our distinguished ranking
member, Representative Sidney Yates. The regular order of the House
will call for the ranking member to have an amendment made in order on
a subject on which he has standing. No one in the country has more
standing on the arts than Sid Yates--a champion indeed. We are all
privileged to call him colleague.
Yesterday, Mr. Armey said that the Ehlers amendment would put
Crayolas in the hands of our children. Yes Crayolas and that's about
all. The Ehlers amendment would translate into less than $1 per child.
That's for a small box of crayons with no burnt siena and azure blue.
The Rep leadership has shown its true colors on this Ehlers
amendment. In the debate on the NEA they claim they need to reduce the
deficit. Today they are spending that money on the Ehlers amendment.
This is about content restruction not deficit reduction. The Ehlers
amendment is a transparent figleaf to give cover to those
Representatives who voted against arts in America.
I urge my colleagues to reject this hoax and reject the Ehlers
amendment.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the
gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Oberstar].
(Mr. OBERSTAR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Ehlers
amendment.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, again I find myself differing from my
friend, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Ehlers]. He made the statement
that the House did not propose to approve NEA. Now, that was never made
clear, I suggest to the gentleman. The vote on the rule yesterday was
certainly not an open and shut and clean vote on NEA.
I suggested to the House today that if they gave the opportunity to
this House for me to offer my amendment to reinstate NEA and give it
some money to operate, I would be willing to bet, a substantial sum, in
view of yesterday's very, very close vote, that the House would have
supported NEA. We never had that opportunity to pass upon that
question.
I want to close by saying that even the chairman of the Committee on
Education and the Workforce [Mr. Goodling], refused to accept the
Ehlers amendment. He said clearly, in response to the question that I
asked him, that if the Ehlers amendment passed, he would unite his
committee and pass legislation to correct the defects that are in the
legislation so he could have a bill that he could give the conferees
between the House and the Senate as representing the House side.
So, obviously, this Ehlers amendment is in the nature of a figleaf.
It does make available some of the money for art, but not in a way that
is effective and certainly not in the way that

[[Page H5152]]

art has been distributed over the years so effectively by the National
Endowment for the Arts.
Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to vote down the Ehlers amendment.
Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the arts
and against the Ehlers amendment which would abolish the NEA and
provide insufficient and ineffective block grants to the States.
The Ehlers amendment would eliminate the National Endowment for the
Arts. This is a move that even State arts agencies oppose. Why adopt an
amendment that even the very organizations purported to benefit think
it is a bad idea?
NEA funding, on the other hand, allows artists and presenters to
bring the arts directly to students and the community at large.
I did some math on Mr. Ehlers' amendment. Assuming all States get an
equal share of this funding, and each school district gets an equal
share within the State, each California school district will receive
$961 per school district.
Even if a school district consisted of only one elementary, middle,
and high school, $961 would barely purchase a set of colored pencils
for each student.
Thankfully, common sense prevailed and the Ehlers amendment failed.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Ehlers
amendment. This amendment would eliminate the National Endowment for
the Arts and is opposed by the very State art councils it purports to
help.
In all candor, the Ehlers amendment is something of a smoke screen.
We should be having a straight, up-or-down vote on the NEA, and we
would have had one if the leadership of the House had not blocked the
Yates amendment from even being debated by a procedural slight of hand.
Whatever you think about the NEA--whether or not you support Federal
funding for the arts--everyone should agree that we should have a fair,
up-or-down vote on the issue. The Yates amendment would have given
Members the option of restoring funding for the National Endowment for
the Arts. It is unfortunate that the House won't have the opportunity
to debate it.
The spending priorities of this Congress continue to amaze me. Just
the other week, this House of Representatives voted to purchase nine
additional B-2 bombers that the Secretary of Defense and the Joint
Chiefs of Staff have told Congress repeatedly that they do want or
need. These planes will cost $13.6 billion dollars to build and an
additional $13.2 billion to operate and maintain.
What a difference 2 weeks make. Today the House is considering
legislation that eliminates funding for the National Endowment for the
Arts. Apparently, the House leadership has determined that, after
spending billions of dollars for B-2 bombers the Pentagon says it
doesn't need, there isn't any money left to support the arts in the
United States. For all the extreme and inaccurate rhetoric coming from
the other side about the expense and utility of the Arts Endowment, the
truth is that the NEA represents just one-hundredth of 1 percent of the
Federal budget. Put another way, the NEA costs each American less than
38 cents a year: That's three dimes, one nickel and three pennies.
So what are our constituents getting for their 38 cents? Since the
NEA was created 32 years ago, the number of arts organizations has
dramatically increased. When the NEA was established, there were only
56 nonprofit theaters in America; today there are over 400. The number
of orchestras have quadruped in number to over 200. Opera companies
have grown from 27 to nearly 100. Our country's modest investment in
the NEA helps support folk festivals, community theater, free lawn
concerts, arts exhibitions in public libraries, and chamber music in
rural areas. The NEA helps to bring the arts to millions of school
children. Just last week, millions of Americans saw the broadcast of
the Fourth of July concert on the Mail by the National Symphony. The
NEA helped make that possible.

The Endowment also serves as a catalyst for private investment in the
arts. Every dollar awarded by the NEA attracts $12 from State and local
art agencies, corporations and other private sources. Indeed, the non-
for-profit arts generate $37 billion in economic activity and support
more than a million jobs. On the community level, the art activities
supported by the NEA simulate local economies, promote tourism, and
make our communities better places to live.
Elimination of the NEA would not mean the elimination of the arts in
America. What it would mean is that the arts could become inaccessible
to many Americans. The arts should not be just for the well-to-do.
Opponents of the Arts endowment insist on rehashing old arguments
against a few controversial grants awarded by the NEA over the last
three decades. The fact of the matter is that only a handful of the
more than 112,000 grants awarded since the NEA's founding have proven
to be controversial, and most of these grants were awarded years ago
before Congress and the NEA took steps to curb funding to objectionable
projects. Yet the opponents of the NEA would throw the baby out with
the bath water.
Had the leadership permitted us to debate it, the Yates amendment
would have given Members the choice of restoring the NEA's funding at
last year's level. I would point out that the Yates amendment was
deficit-neutral since it contained offsetting spending reductions in
other programs.
Mr. Chairman, the NEA is the country's largest single supporter of
the arts in America. Other nations, far less wealthy than the United
States, do much more to support the arts in their countries. Let's not
eliminate the little the Federal Government does do to make the arts
accessible to every American.
I urge my colleagues to reject the Ehlers amendment.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Ehlers
amendment and ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks.
Much of the controversy over the National endowment for the Arts
[NEA] stems from a very small number of artistic projects funded by the
NEA which some people find in poor taste or morally objectionable. In
fact, only 45 out of the 112,000 NEA grants awarded over more than 32
years have been controversial. Further, ``taste'' and ``moral
objection'' are highly subjective yardsticks by which to measure the
arts, and I certainly do not take issue with those subjective
judgments.
I do, however, take issue with the conclusions such people draw that,
because they object to the work a few artists have produced with NEA
funding, the whole program should be terminated. Make no mistake--that
is what will happen if the Ehlers amendment is adopted. This proposal
for a block grant to States will diminish the national stature of the
arts; it will substitute the judgment of one level of government for
another; it is no guarantee the States' judgment will be any better
than that of the NEA; and, in the long run, it will mean diminished
funding and the ultimate termination of support for public funding for
the arts.
In my congressional district, over my entire service in the Congress,
I have never heard an objection to a local arts initiative supported by
the NEA. Quite the contrary, those funds are highly prized and put to
very good use to stimulate initiatives in small communities, which
would not have been possible without those very modest Federal NEA
funds. A few examples from this past year will suffice to make the
point: Little Falls received $7,500 for the St. Francis Music Center;
Pequot Lakes Children's Theater Company received $22,000 for the
production of a new work, ``A Mark Twain Storybook,'' scheduled for an
extended tour during the 1996-97 season; the public television station
in Duluth received a $40,000 grant to broadcast ``Headwaters,'' an
acclaimed public TV series; and the College of St. Scholastica's Arts
Midwest group received a grant for $131,000 for a performing arts tour
by the college's arts group.
In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance Era, it was the doges of
Italy, the archdukes of Austria, the kings and queens and other
nobility throughout Europe, and a few individual wealthy patrons who
supported the arts. In our post-monarchy world of democracy and
egalitarian governments, it has been the Fortune 500 corporations and
wealthy philanthropic industrialists who supported the arts, until the
election of President John F. Kennedy. He recognized that a nation that
rightly invests in the infrastructure, military readiness, education,
and adventure in space should also invest in the enrichment of the
human spirit by supporting the arts, and he launched the National
Endowment for the Arts and its companion program, the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
If your community happens to be fortunate enough to have Fortune 500
mega-corporations in its midst, or a philanthropic foundation with a
commitment to the arts, children's theater, community music centers,
the local symphony orchestra, and other similar expressions of the
spirit, the arts may well be adequately nurtured. But if your community
happens to be rural, remote, and devoid of multimillionaire
philanthropies, then the arts and artists will either perish, if they
exist, or never take root at all for lack of funding.
President Kennedy said: ``A nation devoid of the arts has nothing to
look backward at with pride, nor to look forward to with hope.'' The
NEA has, for people in many small communities and their artists, been a
source of both pride and hope. Do not vote to extinguish either hope or
the NEA.
Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Chairman, I would like to express my strong
disappointment that the rule for debate of the Interior appropriations
bill blocked an open and fair vote on funding for the National
Endowment for the Arts.
I support the NEA, as do a majority of my constituents and, according
to poll after poll, a majority of Americans. NEA-funded activities have
permitted public school students in San

[[Page H5153]]

Pedro, Venice, and Torrance the opportunity to participate in
improvisational theater sponsored by a touring performing arts and
musical company. They have enjoyed special education operatic
performances. They city of Venice has hosted numerous performing arts
events, arts displays, and multi-media activities. And, a grant to the
LA Theater Works Program in my district enabled a set of five American
stage plays taped for radio to be donated to 500 underserved libraries
throughout the country. Events, programs, and gifts such as these
foster creativity and an appreciation of our rich and diverse cultural
and artistic heritage.
Mr. Chairman, private funds alone will not permit the continuation of
activities like these should Congress eliminate the National Endowment
for the Arts. And, while I certainly understand the necessity of
restructuring and reforming the NEA, elimination is not reform. As
mandated in past Congresses, the NEA has worked tirelessly to ensure
that local decision makers are given the ability to fund the programs
needed and requested by their communities. The proposal to transfer
arts funding to State agencies will only waste precious dollars in
creating 50 new bureaucracies to administer a program effectively run
now by the NEA. States and cities tell us they are concerned that other
funding sources they currently enjoy in support of their arts programs
will dry up.
The House should be allowed to debate the future of this agency
openly and fully and to vote. Regrettably, it won't. I oppose this rule
which sanctions tyranny of the minority, and the ideologically driven
policy it seeks to implement.
Mr. FAWELL. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Ehlers amendment.
I have long been a supporter of the arts in America. Although I did
vote in favor of the rule yesterday, which allowed for arts block
grants as a substitute for NEA funds, I did so in strong recognition of
the importance of arts and as a method of continuing dialog between
arts supporters and opponents.
I do however, have concerns that the Ehlers compromise does not
adequately recognize the importance of the Federal arts presence, and
that it does not adequately fund or allow States to fund traveling art
projects and other activities which had been funded by NEA program
grants.
Many of these grants, such as the Glen Ellen Children's Chorus, the
Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, and the American Western Composers
Midwest Chapter have done an excellent job of providing arts education
and enrichment throughout the State of Illinois, and I ask unanimous
consent to include in the Record a complete list of the outstanding
arts organizations funded by NEA program grants in Illinois.
The amendment, although not a perfect compromise does continue arts
funding in America. I support its affirmation of the State and local
arts agencies funded by State arts councils. Indeed, its recognition of
the importance of arts education is also well intended. I therefore
urge support of the amendment.
While saying this, I also urge the House and Senate conferees to
strongly consider the importance of the Federal arts programs ongoing
in the United States as they evaluate arts programs either within or
outside of the National Endowment for the Arts structure.
I appreciate the effort that has gone into this proposal and this
bill, and I urge support of the Ehlers amendment, and the importance of
arts in America.

NEA Dollars Fund Illinois Arts

In addition to the block grant made to the Illinois Arts
Council, the NEA directly funded the following groups in
Illinois this year.
American Library Association (for the ``Writers Live at the
Library'' Program)
American Women Composers Midwest Chapter (to support
American Women Composer 15th Anniversary Gala Opening
Concert)
Art Institute of Chicago (to support ``Cinema in a Chinese
Sphere: Before and After 1997'' & to support the traveling
exhibition ``Art and Archaeology of Ancient West Mexico'')
Arts Matter (for production of support materials for
Gallery 37)
Chicago Children's Choir (to support increase in
programming for children)
Chicago Children's Theatre, Inc. (to support production of
``A Woman of Truth,'' a one-act play celebrating the life of
Sojourner Truth)
Chicago New Art Association (to support the exhibition
review section of the New Art Examiner)
Chicago Public Art Group (to establish a cash reserve)
Chicago Theatre Group, Inc. (to support Goodman Theatre's
Student Subscription Series)
Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra (to support in-school
outreach project called ``Music Pathways'')
Chinese Music Society (to support a series of lectures and
educational concerts of Chinese music)
City Lit Theatre Company (to support collaborative program
with high school students & to develop and present an
original theatre/jazz performance piece based on John Clellon
Holmes's novel, ``The Horn'')
City of Chicago, Illinois (to support collaborations
between the Chicago Coalition of Community Cultural Centers
and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs)
Columbia College (to support Dance Center presentations,
including ``Celebrate Africa/Celebrate Chicago,'' the
Festival of Solo Artists, and the Festival of European
Premieres)
Court Theatre Fund (for presentation of ``The Iphigenia
Cycle'')
ETA Creative Arts Foundation (to support ``The Voice:
Celebrating Divas of the African World'')
Facets-Multimedia, Incorporated (to support 1997 Chicago
International Children's Film Festival)
Free Street Theatre (to support ``TeenStreet,'' a jobs
program offered to low-income, inner city teenagers,
involving creative writing and theater performance)
Glen Ellyn Children's Chorus (for educational outreach
programs)
Guild Complex (to support ``Poets Across the Generations,''
a series of 6 readings)
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (to create new works)
Illinois Alliance for Arts Education (to support expansion
of the ARTSMART program into Quad Cities, Springfield,
Rockford, Peoria, Champagne/Urbana, and Decatur)
Illinois State University (to support development of
website for the independent literary presses and writers'
conferences)
Jazz Institute of Chicago, Inc. (to support musician fees
for 1997 Chicago Jazz Festival)
Little City Foundation (for exhibition of artwork created
by people with developmental disabilities)
Lookingglass Theatre Company (to support world premiere of
the play, ``My Life in Pop: A Theatrical Essay on Popular
Music in Context'')
Lyric Opera Center for American Artists (to support world
premier of ``Between Two Worlds'')
Lyric Opera of Chicago (to support world premier of the
opera, ``Amistad'')
Merit Music Program, Inc. (for augmentation of existing
endowment)
Mostly Music, Inc. (to support the beginning of 3 year
retrospective of 20th Century American Chamber Music)
Muntu Dance Theater (for commissioning of Jawole Jo Zoller
to choreograph ``Roots n Blues'')
National Council of Young Men's Christian Associations of
the USA (to support expansion of the National Readings Tour
of the National Writer's Voice Project)
Orchestral Association (for scholarships for members of
Civic Orchestra of Chicago & to support a month-long
residency devoted exclusively to the performance of new,
modern, and contemporary music, directed by Principal Guest
Conductor Pierre Boulez)
Quad City Arts, Inc. (to support Visiting Artist Series)
Randolph Street Gallery, Inc. (to support ``Trance,'' a
multi-disciplinary project exploring the role of race and
ethnicity in America)
Ravinia (to support student artist jazz camp scholarships
and Jazz in the Schools Mentor Program with Chicago Public
Schools)
Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (to
support exhibition of African-American artist Kerry James
Marshall)
Review of Contemporary Fiction, Inc. (for recovery and
publication of out of print works of fiction by Dalkey
Archive Press)
Shakespeare Repertory (to support live musicians for
Shakespeare productions)
Sutherland Community Arts Initiative (for 1997 JAAZ
Festival)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (to support the
1997-1998 New Visions series performances)
Victory Gardens Theater (to support development of new
plays)
Remember in your letter to specifically mention any of the
above programs that you attended and enjoyed.
In addition to state and local programs, NEA funds support
public radio and television programs which reach millions of
listeners and viewers nationally. In your letter, please
refer to any such programs that you listen to or watch.

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. Chairman. I rise in support of full funding for the
National Endowment for the Arts.
The NEA is a precious gift to all Americans, and we should be
lauding, not killing it.
The NEA is responsible for teaching art and music to children in our
schools. It brings exhibits to small towns and cities in America--
places which cannot afford, or do not have the market to support a
touring dance group or play.
And it is partly responsible for allowing some of America's greatest
artists to get their start. Who knows where the next Stephen Spielberg,
Maya Angelou, or Leonard Bernstein will come from?
As a New Yorker, I am proud that the NEA helps make our museums and
galleries among the greatest in the world. I am proud that people from
across the country and around the globe come to New York City to hear
our operas, see

[[Page H5154]]

our plays, listen to our symphonies, and enjoy the creativity that
abounds.
The NEA is an integral part of what makes New York great. And it
gives those who otherwise would not receive funding a chance to
succeed--a chance to be great.
And NEA is an important economic tool for New York. Some areas of the
country depend upon soy beans--and they get generous farm subsidies.
Other areas depend upon the defense industry--and they get huge
contracts. New York depends upon creativity. We get a very small
stipend from the NEA to help struggling artists, struggling galleries,
and struggling art schools.
There are those on the right who seek to stifle the creativity of
artists--those who fear freedom of expression. I would argue that
Government censorship is a greater fear.
When police start coming into the homes of Oklahoma families to
confiscate copies of The Tin Drum, all Americans should be alarmed.
When political leaders demand that Schindler's List be barred from
television, we should take pause.
That is why I rise in support of NEA, and in support of painters,
sculptors, playwrights, musicians, authors, teachers, lithographers,
photographers, and all those who make this world a more beautiful and
interesting place.
Let's make this tiny investment to help others achieve greatness.
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I rise in fervent opposition
to the amendment offered by Representative Ehlers and Representative
Hunter to H.R. 2107--the Interior appropriations for fiscal year 1998.
I oppose this amendment because it summarily terminates the National
Endowment for the Arts [NEA].
Under the Ehlers amendment, only $80 million will be granted to the
States for arts funding. This will be done in block grants to the
States. Thirty-seven percent, or $29.6 million, will be granted
directly to State art commission; 60 percent, or $48 million, will be
granted directly to local school boards to fund school-based art
activities in the form of arts education block grants; and 3 percent,
or $2.4 million, will be allocated for administrative costs.
The 3 percent allocation to the States will amount to nothing more
than a burden on the States to administer another Federal Program.
There are many questions that must be answered regarding this new plan.
Will this 3 percent allocation be sufficient to administer a brand new
program to all of the 50 States. This amounts to $2.4 million allocated
to administer arts funding to each of the 50 States for distribution of
moneys to the numerous school districts in the United States as well as
the many art commissions of the 50 States. Is this really possible?
Government bureaucrats, whether State, Federal or local, should not
be involved in deciding what art is worthy of funding. Under the NEA,
panels of private citizens make decisions in a three-step process.
First, panels comprised of citizens from every geographic, ethnic and
minority, and artistic and cultural background representing views of
the general public make the initial decisions of accepting
applications. This allows for those who are best qualified to make
artistic decisions to do so.
Second, the chosen applications are then reviewed by the National
Council on the Arts. This Council consists of 26 private citizens who
are nominated by the President. They are each confirmed by the Senate
to 6-year terms.
Third, the applications are then forwarded to the Chairman of the
Council for a final review and decision. Mr. Speaker this is the way
that decisions for the arts should be done; by the people. The citizens
of the NEA are experts in their fields of art and culture.
There is no doubt that an investment in the NEA is an exemplary
investment in the culture of American people. The NEA costs each
American a grand total of 38 cents per year. With this incredible
investment, the NEA enhances the quality of life for Americans through
a diverse and breathtaking array of cultural activities from the best
in theater, touring dance companies, folk festivals, music concerts,
museums and orchestras. This vast array of arts entertainment is
extended to our Nation's schools where millions of students and
children benefit each year.
That is why this amendment offered by Representative Ehlers is
unnecessary and duplicitous. It seeks to do what the NEA is already
doing. Representative Ehlers' amendment allocates 60 percent of the
block grants proposed for the States, or $48 million to be targeted for
school-based arts activities. However, the NEA already funds arts
projects where students greatly benefit.
Representative Ehlers' amendment seeks to allocate 37 percent or
$29.6 million of his proposed block grants to the States, to be
targeted for State art commissions. However, this is already being
done. In Houston, for 1997, no less than 13 reputable arts
organizations received much needed NEA funding. These organizations
are: Houston Grand Opera Association; Menil Foundation; Museum of Fine
Arts, Houston; Contemporary Arts Association of Houston; Cultural Arts
Council of Houston; Da Camera Society of Texas; The Ensemble Theater;
Project Row Houses; University of Houston-University Park Location;
Rice University; and Writers in the Schools.
These grants to the organizations and schools are vital for creation
and presentation, planning and stabilization, as well as education and
access.
The beauty of these grants from the NEA is that they cover a myriad
of cultural and ethnic representations of art. From The Ensemble
Theater which showcases African-American artists to the University of
Houston and Rice University which each train young artists, the NEA is
making a marked difference in the quality of life for all different
cultures represented in America.
Mr. CASTLE. Mr. Chairman, I believe the arts and humanities are
important to the cultural life and diversity of our country--to people
of all ages, to people in our inner cities, in our suburbs, and in our
rural communities--and support efforts to promote the arts and
humanities because of what they make possible in Delaware.
For example, funding for the NEA and the National Endowment for the
Humanities [NEH] helps the Delaware Division of the Arts and the
Delaware Humanities Forum provide grants for many community and school
activities, productions, and initiatives. In addition, the NEA provides
direct funding to the Delaware Symphony Orchestra, the Delaware Theatre
Company, and OperaDelaware. Americans of all ages, race, and income
levels can benefit from the educational and cultural opportunities of
the arts and humanities, fostered through the NEA and the NEH. Our
State agency does tremendous work in enabling the arts to flourish in
our State--in the schools and throughout our rural communities.
I would have liked Members of the House to have had the opportunity
to cast an up-or-down vote on funding for the NEA. Unfortunately, the
rule crafted did not permit a fair and open debate on this important
issue. And the only amendment permitted was one that would eliminate
the NEA and instead provide $80 million in funding to States and
schools for arts programs.
While I do think the block grant concept is one that deserves
consideration and further review, I am opposing the amendment offered
by Representative Ehlers of Michigan because I think it is a late and
harried attempt to partially address the situation while still killing
the NEA. I would support holding congressional hearings on his proposal
and learning more about how it would work. At this point, we have no
idea what the impact would be on States' arts agencies; how
specifically the funding formulas for distributing grants to both the
States and the schools would work; whether it would warrant a new
bureaucracy within the Department of Education to administer these
grants to both the States and the schools; whether or not underserved
communities would benefit from these grants; whether lifelong learning
programs and programs benefiting older Americans would continue; and a
variety of other questions and concerns.
Because this amendment, while offered with good intentions by Vern
Ehlers, is poorly understood, should not have been the only
alternative, was offered as a quick fix to a spending bill, and was
terribly manipulated from a procedural point of view, I opposed the
rule to bring this bill forward and must at this time oppose the Ehlers
amendment.
Ms. STABENOW. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to express my strong support
for continued funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA
broadens public access to the arts for all Americans.
The latest Lou Harris poll indicates that 79 percent of the American
public favors a governmental role in funding the arts. Furthermore, 86
percent of adult Americans participated in the arts last year. Federal
funding for the arts is a good investment because the arts contribute
to our society both financially and educationally.
Financially, the NEA is a great investment in the economic growth of
communities. The nonprofit arts community generates $36.8 billion
annually in economic activity, supports 1.3 million jobs and returns
$3.4 billion to the Federal Government in income taxes.
Federal funding for the arts is critical to leveraging private
funding. NEA requires grant recipients to match all Federal grants up
to 4 to 1. It is also important to note that the NEA's budget
represents less than one one-hundredth of 1 percent of the Federal
budget. In fiscal year 1997, we spent $99.4 million on the NEA, and
almost twice that, $176.2 million, on military bands.
Society benefits from this small investment particularly when art is
part of a comprehensive educational program. Recognizing this,

[[Page H5155]]

NEA Chairwoman Jane Alexander has made arts education her top priority.
Each year, the Arts Endowment opens creative doors to millions of
school children, including at-risk youth. Participation in the arts
improves overall student learning, instills self-esteem and discipline,
and provides creative outlets for self-expression. The arts also help
prepare America's future high-technology workforce by helping students
develop problem-solving and reasoning skills, hone communication
ability, and expand creativity--all important career skills for the
21st century.
Students who study the arts outperform nonarts students on the SAT,
according to reports by the College Entrance Examination Board. In
1995, SAT takers with course work in music performance scored 51 points
higher on the math portion than students with no course work or
experience in the arts. Scores for those with course work in music
appreciation were 61 points higher on verbal and 46 points higher on
the math portion. And longer arts study means even higher SAT scores:
in 1995, those who had studied the arts 4 or more years scored 59
points higher and 44 points higher on the verbal and math portions
respectively than students with no course work.
Exposing children to the arts is more important now that we know how
crucial the first 3 years of a child's life are to full mental and
emotional development. Even at the very beginning of life, children
respond to music and visual stimuli. The NEA increases opportunities
for parents and teachers to share art with children who may not
otherwise have such opportunities.
In Michigan, the NEA supports apprenticeships, mentoring programs,
and in-school performances. These programs enrich the cultural fabric
of our community. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the
continuation of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, for less than 38 cents a year, each
American supports a program which benefits our country culturally,
educationally, and economically. Since its creation over 30 years ago
by President Johnson, the National Endowment for the Arts has more than
proven its value. Today, I would like to stress the importance of the
NEA, and urge that my colleagues vote to save it.
Balancing the budget is a goal that we all share, and we are on the
right road to achieving that goal. We have all worked hard, as has
President Clinton, to bring more fiscal order to our house by
eliminating unnecessary programs and wasteful bureaucracy. Earlier this
week, the Washington Post reported, as did newspapers across the
country, that even without cutting additional governmental programs,
our budget could well be balanced by 1998.
Mr. Chairman, at a time when we struggle to balance the Federal
budget many of my colleagues have targeted the NEA as a program which
could, and should, be eliminated. However, even if the NEA was
eliminated, it would do little to balance our budget, as the NEA
accounts for less than one-hundredth of 1 percent of the budget. We
spend more on military bands each year than on the NEA. Furthermore, a
$99 million Federal investment in the NEA yielded a $3.4 billion return
to the Treasury in taxes from the arts.
Another oft-mentioned misperception is that NEA funds are used to
sponsor controversial programs that Americans find distasteful. The
majority of these claims are distorted, overblown, or misunderstood.
While it is true that some clearly distasteful projects were funded in
the past, it is also true that the rules as to which programs can be
funded have been changed to eliminate funding for controversial
projects.
The NEA was created to enrich cultural lives in all corners of
America. The arts have always flourished in our Nation's biggest
cities, but not so in may of our rural areas, less affluent areas, and
smaller communities; the NEA has changed this. Without the NEA,
Michigan communities such as Muskegon, Ada, Tecumseh, Flint, Ypsilanti,
Dearborn, Temperance, and Monroe would not be able to offer the quality
arts programs that they can today; these programs make a difference. In
Michigan's 16th District, the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village,
the University of Michigan-Dearborn, numerous youth and community
programs could lose all Federal funding.
Mr. Chairman, arts exposure and education is of great importance to
our children and our future. Statistics don't lie. Students with 4
years of arts education score, on the average, 35 points higher on the
Scholastic Aptitude Test. Arts help students excel in math, science,
reading, and all areas requiring critical thinking.
Finally, Americans enjoy the arts and support the NEA; 79 percent
support funding for arts programs.
When looking at the NEA, I urge my fellow colleagues to think about
the budget, think about the importance of our culture, think about our
children, think about our future, and reject narrow thinking. Join with
me today to save the NEA.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in adamant support of
continued funding of the National Endowment for the Arts. As we work
through the budget process, deciding to build weapons of destruction,
and spend unknown billions on the intelligence community, we must
maintain spending for the arts and humanities.
Arts and humanities are a critical part of what civilized life is
about, and I have very serious disagreements with those who want to
increase funding for B-2 bombers and cut back on cultural programs for
all Americans at the same time. Each B-2 bomber costs at least $1.5
billion, 15 times more than the entire funding for the NEA. This
Congress must decide whether we will continue to increase the
destructive capability of this Nation without regard to creative and
artistic expression.
The NEA helps enhance the lives of the children and adults by
supporting organizations which encourage individuals to cultivate their
creative energies. Further, public funding of the arts allows many more
people the chance to attend exhibits and performances, not just those
who can afford expensive theater tickets. NEA is not pork for the rich
and elite. It is crucial funding that brings art to people, schools,
and communities that otherwise would not be able to afford them.
Arts teach our children understanding, self-expression, cooperation
and self-discipline, and tell the story of a nation. Today's children
should be inspired by music and theater and creative art, rather than
desensitized to violence on television by a Congress that sends a
message to the young people of this country that bombs and bullets are
a higher priority than painting and singing.
In my State of Vermont, NEA funding has supported symphony concerts
in rural underserved communities. NEA dollars have assisted in
community-based artist-in-residence programs and a collection of the
work and biographies and self-taught artists in northern rural Vermont.
The NEA is a major funder of the Vermont Council on the Arts, an
organization that brings the arts and festivals to communities across
the State. NEA moneys have funded many other projects in Vermont that
otherwise would not have been possible.
The elimination of the NEA would decimate funding for the arts across
the country. We would likely witness a domino effect wherein local and
State governments redirect their spending priorities in reaction to
changes in Federal spending. private support cannot possibly replace
the role of Federal dollars in arts funding. From 1992 to 1995, there
was a $270 million decline in real dollars in private giving to the
arts. Small and rural communities are even more at risk, since they
receive far fewer private dollars toward the arts. The elimination of
the NEA is contrary to the public will. Recent polls show that 79
percent of the American public favors a governmental role in funding
the arts.
Every year the nonprofit arts community creates nearly $37 billion in
economic activity in this country and 1.3 million American jobs. For
every dollar the NEA invests in communities, there is a twenty-fold
return in jobs, services, and contracts.
The arts are an important part of the foundation of every healthy
democracy. The NEA brings the arts to communities all across the
country regardless of geographic location or level of income.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Ehlers].
The question was taken; and the Chairman announced that the ayes
appeared to have it.

Recorded Vote

Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 155,
noes 271, not voting 9, as follows:

[Roll No. 266]

AYES--155

Aderholt
Archer
Armey
Bachus
Baker
Ballenger
Barrett (NE)
Bass
Bateman
Bereuter
Bilbray
Bilirakis
Bliley
Blunt
Boehner
Boyd
Bunning
Burr
Buyer
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Canady
Chambliss
Chenoweth
Christensen
Coble
Coburn
Collins
Cook
Crapo
Cubin
Cunningham
Davis (VA)
Deal
DeLay
Diaz-Balart
Dickey
Dreier
Duncan
Dunn
Ehlers
Ehrlich
English
Ensign
Everett
Ewing
Fawell
Fowler
Gallegly
Ganske
Gekas
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gingrich
Goodlatte
Goodling
Goss
Graham
Granger
Gutknecht
Hall (TX)
Hastert
Hastings (WA)
Hill
Hobson
Hoekstra
Horn
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hyde
Jenkins
Johnson (CT)
Kim
Klug
Knollenberg
LaHood
Largent
Latham
Leach
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
Linder
Lipinski
Lucas
McCollum

[[Page H5156]]

McDade
McHugh
McInnis
McKeon
Metcalf
Mica
Miller (FL)
Moran (KS)
Nethercutt
Ney
Northup
Norwood
Nussle
Oxley
Packard
Pappas
Parker
Paxon
Pease
Petri
Pickering
Pombo
Porter
Portman
Pryce (OH)
Radanovich
Redmond
Regula
Riley
Rogan
Rogers
Rohrabacher
Ros-Lehtinen
Royce
Sanford
Schaefer, Dan
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shaw
Shays
Shimkus
Skeen
Skelton
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (OR)
Smith (TX)
Snowbarger
Solomon
Spence
Sununu
Tanner
Taylor (NC)
Thomas
Thune
Traficant
Upton
Wamp
Watkins
Watts (OK)
Weldon (FL)
Weldon (PA)
Weller
Whitfield
Wicker
Wolf
Young (AK)
Young (FL)

NOES--271

Abercrombie
Ackerman
Allen
Andrews
Baesler
Baldacci
Barcia
Barr
Barrett (WI)
Bartlett
Barton
Becerra
Bentsen
Berry
Bishop
Blagojevich
Blumenauer
Boehlert
Bonilla
Bono
Borski
Boswell
Brady
Brown (CA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Bryant
Burton
Campbell
Cannon
Capps
Cardin
Carson
Castle
Chabot
Clay
Clayton
Clement
Clyburn
Combest
Condit
Conyers
Cooksey
Costello
Cox
Coyne
Cramer
Crane
Cummings
Danner
Davis (FL)
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Dellums
Deutsch
Dicks
Dingell
Dixon
Doggett
Dooley
Doyle
Edwards
Emerson
Engel
Eshoo
Etheridge
Evans
Fattah
Fazio
Filner
Flake
Foglietta
Foley
Forbes
Ford
Fox
Frank (MA)
Franks (NJ)
Frelinghuysen
Frost
Furse
Gejdenson
Gephardt
Gilman
Gonzalez
Goode
Gordon
Green
Greenwood
Gutierrez
Hall (OH)
Hamilton
Harman
Hastings (FL)
Hayworth
Hefley
Hefner
Herger
Hilleary
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Holden
Hooley
Hostettler
Houghton
Hoyer
Hulshof
Inglis
Istook
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jefferson
John
Johnson (WI)
Johnson, E. B.
Johnson, Sam
Jones
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kasich
Kelly
Kennedy (MA)
Kennedy (RI)
Kennelly
Kildee
Kilpatrick
Kind (WI)
King (NY)
Kingston
Kleczka
Klink
Kolbe
Kucinich
LaFalce
Lampson
Lantos
LaTourette
Lazio
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Livingston
LoBiondo
Lofgren
Lowey
Luther
Maloney (CT)
Maloney (NY)
Manton
Manzullo
Markey
Martinez
Mascara
Matsui
McCarthy (MO)
McCarthy (NY)
McCrery
McDermott
McGovern
McHale
McIntosh
McIntyre
McKinney
McNulty
Meehan
Meek
Menendez
Millender-McDonald
Miller (CA)
Minge
Mink
Moakley
Mollohan
Moran (VA)
Morella
Murtha
Myrick
Nadler
Neal
Neumann
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Owens
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor
Paul
Payne
Pelosi
Peterson (MN)
Peterson (PA)
Pickett
Pitts
Pomeroy
Poshard
Price (NC)
Quinn
Rahall
Ramstad
Rangel
Reyes
Riggs
Rivers
Rodriguez
Roemer
Rothman
Roukema
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Ryun
Sabo
Salmon
Sanchez
Sanders
Sandlin
Sawyer
Saxton
Scarborough
Schaffer, Bob
Schumer
Scott
Serrano
Shadegg
Sherman
Shuster
Sisisky
Skaggs
Smith, Adam
Smith, Linda
Snyder
Souder
Spratt
Stabenow
Stark
Stearns
Stenholm
Stokes
Strickland
Stump
Stupak
Talent
Tauscher
Tauzin
Taylor (MS)
Thompson
Thornberry
Thurman
Tiahrt
Tierney
Torres
Towns
Turner
Velazquez
Vento
Visclosky
Walsh
Waters
Watt (NC)
Waxman
Wexler
Weygand
White
Wise
Woolsey
Wynn
Yates

NOT VOTING--9

Berman
Bonior
Boucher
Doolittle
Farr
Hansen
Molinari
Schiff
Slaughter

{time} 1225

Messrs. PAYNE, CANNON, and COX of California, and Mrs. EMERSON and
Mrs. KENNELLY of Connecticut changed their vote from ``aye'' to ``no.''
Mr. CRAPO changed his vote from ``no'' to ``aye.''
So the amendment was rejected.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will read.
The Clerk read as follows:

National Endowment for the Humanities

grants and administration

For necessary expenses to carry out the National Foundation
on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965, as amended,
$96,100,000, shall be available to the National Endowment for
the Humanities for support of activities in the humanities,
pursuant to section 7(c) of the Act, and for administering
the functions of the Act, to remain available until expended.

Amendment Offered by Mr. Chabot

Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:

Amendment offered by Mr. Chabot:
Beginning on page 76, strike line 14 and all that follows
through line 10 on page 77.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the consideration of the Chabot
amendment en bloc?
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, if I understand correctly, there is only one
amendment. What is the en bloc?
The CHAIRMAN. The amendment by the gentleman from Ohio addresses two
consecutive paragraphs, which would require unanimous consent for
consideration simultaneously.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I have no objection.
The CHAIRMAN. Hearing no objection, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr.
Chabot] is recognized for 5 minutes in support of his amendment.
Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that all debate on
this amendment and all amendments thereto close in 10 minutes and that
the time be equally divided.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Ohio?
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I object.
The CHAIRMAN. Objection is heard.

{time} 1230

Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, my amendment is simple and straightforward.
It strikes all funding to the National Endowment for the Humanities,
and it saves the American taxpayers $110 million.
Members will recall that it was a former chairman of the National
Endowment for the Humanities, the NEH, Lynn Cheney, who was head of
that organization for about 7 years, from 1986 to 1993, who concluded
that the NEH indeed does more harm than good and should be closed down
once and for all.
My amendment does just that. There are many problems with the NEH.
First, it is an agency that historically has squandered millions of tax
dollars on silly projects that benefit few, if any, hardworking
taxpayers. Second, it has come to breed a form of arrogance that only a
true culture bureaucrat, as George Will would call them, could concoct.
We have debated this issue before, so I will not recite the laundry
list of questionable projects funded for the benefit of the cultural
and academic elite at the expense of the average taxpayers. I will not
dwell on Sheldon Hackney's national conversation kit, which ostensibly
would teach us all how to talk to one another, all for the mere $1.7
million to teach Americans how to talk.
I will not dwell too much on the NEH's highly controversial national
standards for teaching history in our school systems or any of the
other questionable projects deemed worthy of our tax dollars by a
handful of Washington bureaucrats. The NEH record is there for all to
see. That is why when I offered a similar amendment to the fiscal year
1996 Interior appropriations bill, it was endorsed by groups like the
National Taxpayers Union, Citizens Against Government Waste, Citizens
for a Sound Economy, Americans for Tax Reform, and those same
organizations, as well as the National Tax Limitation Committee,
Capital Watch, Frontiers of Freedom, the Competitive Enterprise
Institute and others, are supporting it again this year.
Mr. Chairman, whenever I am called on to discuss the National
Endowment for the Humanities, I cannot help but recall a letter that I
once received from the top NEH bureaucrat in my State of Ohio. He told
me, and it was a letter, so I cannot tell Members whether he had a
straight face at the time he sent it or not. He said, ``if there were
no NEH, the public intellectual life of Ohio would shrink
considerably.'' He really said that.
I can tell Members I spend quite a lot of time with the people of
Ohio, and I have a little bit more faith in their intellectual
abilities than do the NEH bureaucrats. I am pretty certain that without
the NEH the people of Ohio would do quite well. In fact, I know they
would do just fine. I am reasonably sure that very few of those
taxpayers, save a handful of NEH functionaries and beneficiaries, would
even notice the difference. Mr. Chairman, I think that most of us know
that the NEH benefits the very few at the expense of all working
Americans.

[[Page H5157]]

It is unfair that those taxpayers should shoulder the burden. A yes
for this particular amendment I believe is a vote for the taxpayer. A
no vote signifies support for the status quo, and another $110 million
tax for the culture bureaucrats to do with basically what they want.
I know there are many, many things that one can point out that the
NEH arguably has done a good job at, some programs that have benefited
some people. On the other hand, there have been an awful lot of abuses.
More importantly, it basically is a matter of one's philosophy.
I happen to think that these things which are funded by the NEH,
where some of them may be worthy, they should be privately funded, they
should be locally funded, but they should not be funded by the Federal
Government. These dollars should not be taken out of the pockets of
hardworking taxpayers in this country and given basically to academic
elites to do with what they want.
They have programs where we have summer institutes and seminars,
where they junket elite academics in places such as Hawaii, which I am
sure is a very nice place, and Germany and all around the world to
essentially take a vacation, pay them thousands of dollars to do that.
I think these dollars ought to stay in the pockets of the hardworking
American citizens. I do not think that we ought to give these dollars
to academic elites.
Again, I am sure there are many Members who will say they do this,
they preserve books, they do other things. All those things are fine.
It is a matter of should Federal tax dollars go for these things. I
would argue no, they should be funded privately, locally, and not with
the money of the hardworking taxpayers of this country.
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I thought that after the effort of the gentleman from
Ohio [Mr. Chabot] last year that perhaps we were not going to encounter
the same kind of opposition from him that we now experience. I cannot
understand how a nice person such as the gentleman from Ohio can offer
a destructive amendment of this kind. How can a Member of the House be
against an organization whose primary purpose is preserving and
protecting the history of the United States and in teaching that
history to our children? Is there any reason in our budget for the
reduction of this very essential part of our culture?
The House has just signed and approved a $268 billion authorization
for our war machine. The money that is in this bill for the humanities
is part of our peace machine. We have wars, we have people who have to
be trained to try to stop wars and to make agreements before wars or
after wars, and humanities makes a major contribution in that respect.
It has special projects to preserve history. It has a project to
preserve the Nation's major newspapers so that they do not crumble into
bits. They have projects to save the Nation's most important books
which are burning up because they are being destroyed. It is helping to
finance the leading universities in the country and their libraries in
order to protect 20 million books which are now threatened with utter
destruction by the fragmentation and yellowing of their pages.
What do we gain with this amendment? Yes, we will gain $110 million
for the taxpayer, but the losses will be enormous. The losses of the
opportunities to teachers to improve their methods of teaching history,
the opportunities of learning to teach philosophy, the opportunities of
learning all of the social sciences that are so essential to the well-
being of a democracy. Those will be lost.
I hope that the Members of the House will look at this amendment very
carefully and that they will conclude with me that the work of the
National Endowment for the Humanities is necessary to preserve and to
foster the social fabric of our country and vote down this amendment.
Mr. VENTO. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. YATES. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.
Mr. VENTO. I want to concur with the view of the gentleman from
Illinois.
Mr. Chairman, I was unable to speak on the last amendment that
failed, and I am pleased that it did fail. I think that the National
Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities
really represent a symbol of the preservation of the creative genius of
us as Americans, as a part of our culture, as a part of the fostering
of creativity. It is enormously important as an export product. Look at
what we are doing in terms of the flourishing of ideas and free
thought. I suppose that some of it becomes controversial, but if I look
at John Stuart Mill or I look at others that have written in philosophy
and religion, I am certain at times that their views were
controversial, but that is the nature of this particular endeavor in
the humanities and in the arts. It is coming to grips with issues that
very often are not popular or may even be unpopular. This is an
enormous reservoir in protection of the creativity which is the genius
of this country, the pluralism of this country, one of our great
strengths, the fact that these two entities at the Federal level have
been so successful. Yes, there have been issues that are controversial.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Yates] has
expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Yates was allowed to proceed for 1
additional minute.)
Mr. VENTO. I think that if we look at the programs like the Poet in
Residence in Olivia, MN, that goes to the grade schools, these are not
the Robert Frosts of the world but they are people that are endeavoring
in the arts and have basically given their life in terms of teaching,
of helping and in fostering this creativity which is a great economic
and I say a great strength in terms of who we are as an American
people. To bring these amendments to the floor and to treat them and to
point out the criticisms, yes, there will be criticisms wherever that
occurs, but I think we have a great opportunity here to keep these
programs in place. They are good programs, they are supported by the
public, and they are really touching the quintessential fabric of what
our Nation and what our people are about. I thank the gentleman for
yielding and for his opposition.
Mr. YATES. I thank the gentleman for his very substantial
contribution in opposition to the amendment.
Mrs. FOWLER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the Chabot amendment.
The National Endowment for the Humanities funds programs promoting
history, English, literature, foreign languages, sociology,
anthropology and comparative literature. The NEH provides grants to
colleges and universities, to museums and libraries in all 50 States,
and the State humanities councils reach out to increase our citizens'
understanding of history and culture.
Mr. Chairman, the humanities are critical to our society. They teach
us who we were, who we are, and what we might become for a cost of only
42 cents per American. NEH is the largest single source of support for
research and scholarships in the humanities in the United States. It
also funds preservation of millions of historically and culturally
important books that are in need of being preserved.
Despite our low funding allocation in Florida, my State has reaped a
substantial benefit from NEH grants, which have been used for projects
as diverse as helping to restore libraries that were ruined during
Hurricane Andrew to leveraging over $2 million in local and State
contributions just this year.

{time} 1245

As the past president of the Florida Humanities Council, I am keenly
aware of the importance of NEH funds and the negative impact of
eliminating such funding. I urge my fellow Members to vote against this
amendment and maintain the Committee on Appropriations' funding level.
Mr. BOSWELL. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I rise to speak against this amendment and to second
the things I have just heard from the last couple of speakers. It seems
like that we forget in this time and age, when we are working so hard,
to be sure and bring up equal opportunity to everybody, the electronic
age and fiber optic

[[Page H5158]]

networks and all these things, and then we decide to take a program
that enhances and reaches out to everybody and start picking it apart.
And I am a little bit appalled that this would take place.
So I rise opposed to my colleague's amendment to eliminate the
funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities. This, modest by
most government standards, program over the past 20 years has been able
to provide literally opportunities for thousands of teachers through
its training seminars and other programs, and these teachers have in
turn been able to touch the lives of millions of our children.
The NEH supports scholarly research, education, public programs in
the humanities through grants to individuals, institutions, and
organizations for projects and programs. NEH provides many small grants
for speakers and purchasing books for reading discussion groups. It
reaches across the land in sparse and low-populated areas, poor areas,
provides opportunities for people to have an equal opportunity to have
part of those things being discussed so well. In Iowa many of these
small grants are barely over $1,000 each, but it touches a lot of
lives.
A vote for this amendment is a vote to remain in the past. Our
country depends on our teachers' ability to train our young people to
continually look forward. So let us move to the light, not to the
darkness. Do not support this amendment.
Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Chabot] to eliminate funding for the National
Endowment for the Humanities, NEH. I had hoped that all of our Members
might have had an opportunity earlier this year to attend a gathering
here on Capitol Hill when all the citizen and staff leadership of the
humanities councils, the State humanities councils from around the
country, had their meeting here. Their guest speaker was Stephen
Ambrose, the author of the recently acclaimed book ``Undaunted
Courage.''
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. BEREUTER. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, also a distinguished former alumni of the
University of Wisconsin.
Mr. BEREUTER. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I am aware of that,
and he is an exceptional graduate and has claims, I think, down in
Tulane as well.
This Member is most familiar with the National Endowment for the
Humanities through the activities of the Nebraska Humanities Council
which consistently provides high quality humanities programming at very
little cost to citizens of all walks of life in my State. It is not a
program for the elite. Since 1973 they have funded programs in more
than 200 different communities in all of Nebraska's 93 counties,
reaching more communities each year. Some of those counties have fewer
than 500 residents and are especially appreciative of this assistance.
Surely the same type of examples that I am going to use could be cited
for every State.
Now this is in direct contrast to what the gentleman from Ohio has
indicated. That is to say, for example, in Nebraska, and I believe in
most States, or maybe all, many, many of our taxpayers are
beneficiaries of NEH funding. This is absolutely not an elitist
program.
The Nebraska Humanities Council has been especially effective at
reaching residents in the First Congressional District of Nebraska.
This Member's district encompasses Lincoln with its colleges and
museums as well as the small cities and villages whose primary formal
educational assets are their libraries and their consolidated public
and religious schools.
For example, the council has developed a humanities resource center
with a large speakers bureau, exhibits, films and videos that enable
the smallest communities to benefit from the cultural resources of
Nebraska's metropolitan areas and metropolitan areas from elsewhere in
the Great Plains. The speakers bureau has been particularly helpful to
Nebraska schools as they comply with the new requirement for
multicultural education. Of course, the Humanities Council does not
charge the schools for this valuable educational service.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, for these and many other reasons this
Member urges the defeat of the Chabot amendment. The National Endowment
for the Humanities is a highly appropriate use of a modest amount of
public funds in a great and diverse country like the United States of
America.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I stand in support of the Chabot amendment, and here is
why.
As my colleagues know, we are kind of getting involved in what policy
should be or, I guess, what is good and what makes sense and so forth.
But we should remember that just because something is a good program
does not mean that it should not be recognized and supported locally as
a good program, as opposed to Washington has to do everything because
if we do not do it, it means we do not love humanity or people or
little children or sex and gender studies or some of the other valuable
projects the NEH gets involved in. But just imagine this, Mr. Chairman:
If a person were on a diet, if they were on a 6-month diet to lose 30
pounds, and they got to the fourth month and they had lost 28 pounds,
would they stop dieting? As my colleagues know, this person is ahead of
their time schedule, they had not reached their goal yet. Would they
quit exercising and start eating ice cream again and say, ``Hey,
look''?
The situation that we are in right now is similar to that fiscally,
Mr. Chairman. We have reduced the deficit greatly. The Wall Street
Journal said yesterday we may have the deficit projection as low as $45
billion, and I want Members of the House to think about this: If we can
get within $45 billion of balancing the budget, is it not incumbent on
us as Members of Congress to do everything we can to go ahead and push
toward that zero, to reach the goal? If we were on the diet, reach it
in 4 months instead of 6 months?
As my colleagues know, this money, this appropriation for NEH, it is
within the budget. But that does not mean it is good. That does not
mean that everything about the budget is perfect.
What is in here that is so necessary? I think we should look at this
question: Are our projects necessary for the Federal Government? Not
just are they nice and are they pleasant, and does it make us feel
intellectual or cultural or whatever.
And I know there are Members who do feel cultural when they see that
$400,000 went to Doran Ross at UCLA for, quote, ``The Art of Being
Kuna: The Expressive Culture of the San Blas Islands, Panama,''
$400,000. Not many constituents in my district make that kind of money.
Or how about this one: $108,000 to Howard Kushner of San Diego State
University for ``The History of Tourette's Syndrome.''
How about this? A grant of $135,000 to Edward English of the
University of Notre Dame for ``Sex and Gender in the Middle Ages.''
Boy, a burning issue in my district. This is from the year 1150 to
1450, for those of my colleagues who are interested in getting a copy
of it. I do not know if it will apply, but it was a good old 5-week
summer junket for 24 college students.
How about this one? A grant of $201,000 to Laurie Kahn-Leavitt of
Filmmakers Collaborative for ``A Midwife's Tale: Discovering the World
of Martha Ballard.'' Now has anybody read that? I mean all those
defenders of NEH, tell me, was Martha Ballard's story a good one? I
missed it.
As my colleagues know, my kids are dying to see ``Jurassic Park'' or
the sequel, ``Lost World'', but we have not seen Martha Ballard. A
grant of $201,000; again, not many people in my district are making
money like that.
Or how about this: $34,500 to Carol Maier of Kent State for
``Delirium and Destiny.'' Well, that is a good one.
What happened to private initiatives? What happened to spending State
or local money if it is so important?
As my colleagues know, we are not really arguing here if NEH is good
or bad. What we are really saying: Is it necessary, is it necessary to
borrow

[[Page H5159]]

children's money to pay for such projects? I submit, Mr. Chairman, it
is not necessary to have this program, and as long as we are $5.4
trillion in debt we should be able to ask ourselves this question:
If this was coming out of my pocketbook, if it was coming out of my
wallet, would I spend the money this way, or am I just doing it because
it is taxpayers' money?
I would say to the Members of the House, If you can say yes, this is
how I would, in fact, spend my money, than certainly they want to vote
against the Chabot amendment. But if they are doing it just because
somebody else is paying for it, think about the $5 trillion debt, think
about the children who will be inheriting so much of this debt and vote
for the Chabot amendment. And join, in doing that, the National
Taxpayer's Union, the Citizens Against Government Waste, Citizens for A
Sound Economy, Americans for Tax Reform, the Competitive Enterprise
Institute, Frontiers of Freedom, National Tax Limitation Committee and
Capitol Watch.

Below are a few examples of how the NEH is wasting tax
dollars. When the average salary in America is approximately
$20,000 a year, does it really make sense that the taxpayers
are giving:
$150,000 to Jacquelynn Baas at UC Berkely for
``Interpretive Programs for `Face of the Gods: Art and Altars
of the African Diaspora' '';
$400,000 to Doral H. Ross at UCLA for ``The Art of Being
Kuna: The Expressive Culture of the San Blas Islands,
Panama'';
$108,000 to Howard I. Kushner of San Diego State University
for ``History of Tourette's Syndrome'';
$140,000 to Devon G. Pena of Colorado College for ``Upper
Rio Grande Hispano Farms: A Cultural and Natural History of
Land Ethics in Transition, 1850-1994'';
$135,000 to Edward D. English of the University of Notre
Dame for ``Sex and Gender in the Middle Ages, 1150-1450,''
supporting a five-week summer institute for 24 college
teachers;
$201,000 to Laurie Kahn-Leavitt of Filmmakers Collaborative
for ``A Midwife's Tale: Discovering the World of Martha
Ballard'' to support production of a test reel for a feature
length documentary film on the life and world of 18th-century
midwife Martha Ballard;
$34,000 to Mary Ann Smart of SUNY research Foundation/Stony
Brook Main Campus for ``Representations of Gender and
Sexuality in Opera,'' ``to support a conference to examine
new ways to understand the cultural context of opera texts
and music, focusing on how new musicological work on gender
can be applied to the study of opera'';
$210,742 to Charles V. Blatz of the University of Toledo
for ``Humanities 2000: A Multi-Year Collaboration to
Strengthen the Humanities Foundations'';
$34,500 to Carol Maier of Kent State University for
``Delirium and Destiny''; and
$114,000 to Catholic University to support the preparation
of a database of indices for the Gregorian chants found in
ten major manuscripts, to be disseminated on diskettes and on
the Internet?
Among many, many other such projects, remember, too, that:
The American history standards released by the NEH have
been widely criticized as very flawed. Former NEH chairman
Lynne Cheney has publicly disavowed the project. Indeed, she
recently called for an end to federal funding for the NEH
altogether.
Current NEH head Sheldon Hackney is spending $1.7 million
to promote a ``national conversation.'' Over the objections
of his own National Council, Hackney pushed through a
``national conversation'' television program.
``Do you really think voters in your home state will
understand why these programs were killed?'' the NEH lobby
asks in its most recent ad. A better question might be, why
were the programs funded by the federal government in the
first place? They are worthy programs, surely, but why do
they need federal tax dollars at this time of massive
deficits?

Mr. BALDACCI. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I could not help but rise, having attended ``Midwife's
Tale'' with Martha Ballard, and it was done in Maine, and it was done
through a grant through the National Endowment for the Humanities. It
was a story about a midwife working in rural Maine in the early 1800's.
It was a story of women working and women's roles in a part of Maine
and a part of this country that had never been told before, and without
that grant and without that research would never have been known. I
attended that film to a packed hall, and it was in northern Maine.
My district is the most rural district east of the Mississippi. There
are 32 rural health clinics in my district. My district borders Canada,
New Hampshire, and the rock-bound coast, and without the support from
the National Endowment for the Humanities we would not have been able
to see performances like this. We would not be able to get the arts and
humanities involved and we would not have been able to have that
involvement.
One of the greatest studies that has been accomplished has shown us
that students involved in arts and humanities programs, and this is
through testing, have been able to improve their SAT scores by 50 and
60 points. Arts and humanities is not an appetizer, it is part of the
main course. The more that we understand, like in a diet that was
referred to earlier as balanced nutrition, nothing in excess and
everything in moderation, it is how we ought to look at arts and
humanities. It is a lot more important.
This weekend is the birthday of Andrew Wyeth. He is going to be 80.
It is going to be celebrated at the Farnsworth Museum in Maine, and how
fitting to have a discussion here in the national Congress as to how
unimportant arts and humanities are, and being able to pick on
particular projects that are being done in particular areas without
really knowing what those projects did.
The arts and humanities are going to allow a hundred small towns in
Maine under the century project to do oral history projects. Some of
the great histories in minds over time have told us that if we can take
the culture of a previous generation and be able to mix it with the
next generation, that that is the product of success.
So I think our strength comes from our culture. It is our glue that
holds our communities together, and if the National Endowment for the
Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities are going to provide
the glue that is going to hold our families, communities and counties
and States together and help to do that, then those are the things that
we ought to be encouraging.
It seems to me that the money that is being spent in proportion to
the national Federal budget is very minuscule for the impact that it is
making because these are matching grants. They require contributions at
the local, private, State level to be matched. Those are the kinds of
the things that we want to nurture.
Mr. Chairman, I would think that a party that is interested in family
values and community values and in bringing people together and in
breaking down those barriers would be very much supportive of these
kinds of efforts. So this is a program that has a proven track record,
one we ought to support.
Mr. CASTLE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I do rise in opposition to the Chabot amendment. I
would point out initially that the amount of money that we are talking
about here in the funding, the $110 million, is a reduction from a
substantially higher amount, closer to $200 million, which has been
done as a reasonable step in conserving the taxpayers' money.

{time} 1300

I am a strong supporter of what we have been able to do with the
National Endowment for the Humanities. The Delaware Humanities Forum is
an organization which funds the humanities in Delaware. It receives
nearly 90 percent of its money from the NEH.
I was in Bridgeville, DE. Let me explain where Bridgeville, DE, is.
If anyone has their senses about them, they are going to go through it
on the way to Rehoboth, DE. That is how you get there, you go right
through, on your way there. It is a lovely farming community in Sussex
County, DE.
I was there on October 18 of last year with most of the elected
officials locally and in the State of Delaware. It might have had
something to do with the fact that the election was a couple weeks
later, too. It was for the world premier of this movie, ``If You Lived
Here You Would Be Home Now,'' which is a slogan they use and which
other towns use.
It is a film about the life and work of a painter whose name is Jack
Lewis. Jack Lewis came to Bridgeville, DE, as part of a work project
many, many years ago, in the thirties. He is 82 years old now. This is
an incredible film. It was shown in the high school gymnasium; 700
people showed up to see

[[Page H5160]]

this film because of their pride in Jack Lewis. They had to have a
second showing, and I understand that was almost sold out as well later
in that particular evening.
Mr. Chairman, the movie is interesting. I will read what it says on
the back of the container for it. It says:

In Bridgeville, Delaware, a town known mostly for the
amount of scrapple, apples, and chickens it produces, New
Deal artist Jack Lewis has integrated his art and murals into
the lives of its citizens, and empowered these working people
to express themselves on their own. By following how this
artist has touched the lives of people who would not normally
be exposed to art, the film explores larger issues about the
role of the artist in society, public funding for culture,
and cultural elitism, all from the perspective of a small
town.

I can tell the Members that the people of that town, to a man or
woman in that audience, embraced that movie as they have embraced this
artist who has taught the children, has taught the disabled, has taught
the disenfranchised young people that had no place to go, has been in
our prisons, has done so much for Delaware. It has been shown all over
the State of Delaware. We have tried to get it, and may still do it, on
public television.
A review in the Washington Post said that perhaps there is a lesson
in that story there about learning to love what is all around you,
which is how Bridgeville has come to love art; it is everywhere you
look. Because of Lewis, it has seeped into the lives of the barbers,
dry cleaners, firefighters, undertakers.
This was $50,000 that was put in by the Delaware Humanities Forum,
which they say gets its money from the National Endowment for the
Humanities to help make this film which has pleased so many people in
my State, and in my judgment could please people around the country if
they had a chance to see it.
In short, Mr. Chairman, like everything else there is some risk, and
there are some things that perhaps should not be funded, but the bottom
line is so many wonderful things have happened through the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
I would strongly urge every single person on the Republican and
Democratic side of the aisle to reject this amendment, to realize that
we have already made sufficient cuts, and to realize that if we manage
the National Endowment for the Humanities well, it can do a wonderful
job in teaching us so much about our history and all the other things
that other speakers have spoken to.
I strongly embrace the National Endowment for the Humanities funding
as put forward by the committee, and I would urge everybody to oppose
the Chabot amendment.
Mr. CAPPS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
(Mr. CAPPS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. CAPPS. Mr. Chairman, I have to rise today in opposition to the
amendment. I do so from a background in the humanities. In fact, as I
mentioned yesterday, my first exposure to Congress was when I chaired
the California Council for the Humanities and was national president of
the Federation of State Humanities Councils, and I had the privilege at
that time to meet the committee that was chaired at that time by my
congressman, the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Sidney Yates.
I think I am here because of the background that I have had with the
humanities. I have profound respect for the work that has gone on under
the sponsorship of the National Endowment for the Humanities. I have to
say that I resent the accusation that the work of NEH is conducted
primarily by and for the benefit of academic elites and bureaucrats.
My own background is in the University of California, and I have
sometimes been described as an academic elite, but the situation with
NEH is that they stand as the one clear agency in the country that is
dedicated to overcoming that kind of gap.
Most of the programs that NEH sponsors have a very definite and
required public dimension. I am thinking of all the programs we have
watched on public television. I think of the programs for young
scholars, some of whom are academically certified, some of whom are not
yet but have shown unusual promise. Scholars all over the country have
had their careers boosted, and energized by support from the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
I would like to call attention to two specific projects that NEH has
funded and supports that have had profound ramifications around the
country. I think first of all of the State programs. The gentleman from
Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter] mentioned the great work of the Nebraska
Council on the Humanities. The same is true for the one in California,
and all of the States have these public programs that bring people
together.
The NEH lifelong education. Education does not end at the age of 22,
at the end of a college career, but should be lifelong, and it is the
NEH that has been chiefly responsible for energizing lifelong education
in this country.
Second, I would like to point out that 50,000 schoolteachers, have
participated in the summer seminar program that has been sponsored by
the National Endowment for the Humanities. Think of the reverberations
from that. Fifty thousand schoolteachers, hard-working men and women,
not making any money on this, giving up their summertime to come and
work with a scholar in order to perfect their skills and to perfect
their teaching ability. Then they go back home. Think of the
ramifications of that in the classroom and how many students are
touched by the work that has happened in those seminars.
Mr. Chairman, I want to say that I think that a nation should be
judged on how it relates to its intellectual heritage. That is really
what is at stake here. I stand in very strong opposition to the
amendment, because I am a full-scale believer in the work of the
National Endowment for the Humanities.
Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the
requisite number of words.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the Chabot amendment and
in very strong support of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The National Endowment for the Humanities supports long-term
collaborative projects of national significance that could not be
funded by any single State or single institution.
For instance, the NEA funded the Ken Burns series, ``The Civil War,''
``Roots,'' ``Baseball.'' Think of the number of Americans whose
understanding of our history was enlarged by those series, but in
addition, they also increased tourism at our national battlefields and
other Civil War sites by one-third. The Civil War series created real
dollars to real communities, because Americans were more knowledgeable
about their own history. The NEH funds projects like the Brittle Books
project, to preserve the manuscripts that record our early history but
were printed on paper that is disintegrating. Those national treasures
must be preserved with national dollars. That is not a project that any
State or any institution could undertake.
In addition, the NEH leverages millions and millions of dollars to
enable local and State organizations to better educate their people and
better preserve their history. In Connecticut alone, challenge grants
from the NEH have leveraged $1 billion. Many, many have benefited:
little towns, small cities, children, schools, adults, and town
libraries.
In Bristol, CT, the American Clock and Watch Museum was able to put
on a presentation of the Origins of the American Industrial Revolution
in Connecticut. Clock-making, enriched our understanding of that small
city's role in a very important industry. The New England Carousel
Museum is another Bristol beneficiary along with all who tour that gem
of a museum. Falls Village and Canaan got money to help plan the Depot
Museum in Heritage Park.
This will go not only to help those small towns in Connecticut bring
their history into focus and display it in a way that others can
understand, but also to create a tourist attraction that will broaden
their economic base and better support their people, thus enriching the
knowledge and understanding of the people of that corner and all who
pass through it, while strengthening its economy.
In Farmington, CT, NEH money has helped us uncover the history of the

[[Page H5161]]

Farmington Canal, preserve that canal, and educate people about it.
Those are the kinds of projects that no individual small town can
support and be responsible for entirely, but that are of not only local
and State significance, but also of national significance.
In Litchfield, preservation of the Nation's first law school is
something that we all should care about, we all should be interested
in. Certainly the local community is interested and the State has been
as well, but critical NEH dollars have helped us succeed with that
project. I could go on and on with projects, and examples of
educational series that our art museums have been able to offer because
of the NEH grants, but my point is clear NEH affects the lives of every
one of us in small towns and very rural communities and throughout
America.
It also does things like sponsoring seminars for teachers, enabling
them in the summer to work with outstanding scholars, and deepen their
understanding of the subject matter they are responsible for teaching
to our young people.
Recently the Carnegie Foundation completed a study that showed that
there was a direct correlation between children's achievement in our
public schools and the depth of subject matter expertise of their
teachers. So this kind of effort to give teachers the opportunity to
work with outstanding scholars in their area has a direct effect on the
achievement of our children in our public schools.
Over 3 million Americans have taken part in NEA-sponsored reading and
discussion programs in libraries in all 50 States over the last 16
years. Lifelong learning makes a nation strong, creates understanding
and spirit that not only enriches individuals but whole communities and
the fabric of our society.
Mr. Chairman, I urge opposition to the amendment and support of the
National Endowment for the Humanities.
Mr. GEJDENSON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, we have gone through a number of pieces of legislation
here today, and the sum total of what we are doing seems to say, bring
on the darkness; that if we came out of the dark ages and went into the
renaissance, if we put this Congress in charge, they would try to shut
down thinking.
The idea that a great country can be sustained while there is no
central government playing a critical role in thinking and in
education, in preservation, that is an idea that other countries have
tried. If Members go to them, they would not want to stay there.
Everybody understands there ought to be some balance in what we do in
government. If we can give the head of Microsoft a $6 billion or $9
billion tax savings, driven by the Members on the other side of the
aisle, it seems we can take a few of those pennies back to make sure
that the intellectual matter that has built this country is preserved.
Mr. Chairman, this book is now preserved. It is by Melville. Without
the preservation funds, when you turn or crease the page, it comes
apart. So our choice is simple. This country has prospered because we
tried to make sure that the broadest base of our citizenry had access
to information, to knowledge, to science. The question is, Are we going
to cut one activity that is critical in many aspects to get at the
small communities?
It is almost like the Post Office; if you live in New York City or
Boston, you do not need us. What you produce helps the rest of us,
often, but the critical mass, to have an arts program or what have you,
saving books, that will occur at the great institutions in the large
cities. But for those of us who represent average people in smaller
communities, what these programs provide is the enlightenment. It is an
opportunity to build a society with a broad recognition of what is out
there in the world.
I would venture to say when we talk about trade balance, when we talk
about a competitive country, there is nothing more important than what
we are fighting about here today.
Reject this amendment. Members should understand their responsibility
as national legislators, building a future for this country. Do not
turn back to the darkness and end the enlightenment.

{time} 1315

(Mr. REGULA asked and was given permission to proceed out of order
for 1 minute.)

Legislative Schedule

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, I rise to advise the Members what we plan
to do is have a vote on the Chabot amendment. That will be all we will
do for the rest of the day. We will rise immediately after the
completion of that vote. So this will enable those that are planning
for airplanes and so on, there will be one more vote and then we will
rise.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I think this amendment that is being brought to the
House is an example of Members who understand the cost of everything
and the value of nothing.
I just heard a prior speaker, a few speeches ago, lecture us about
the $100 million-plus a year that this endowment costs the taxpayer. It
is true. It does. But the same gentleman who spoke voted last week to
require this country to buy nine B-2 bombers that the Pentagon did not
want. Each one of those B-2 bombers cost $1.2 billion. This Congress
chose, over the advice of the Pentagon, to buy nine of those. The cost
of those nine B-2 bombers would fund this account for the next 99
years. So who is kidding whom?
This is not about whether taxpayers' money is going to be saved or
not. This issue is whether or not we are going to make a small
investment to preserve the best of American heritage and to help us to
the best of our ability to rise above the lesser aspects of our
natures.
That is what the humanities are all about. Let me explain what the
National Endowment for the Humanities does. It provides exhibits. It
helps libraries all over the country to preserve some of their prize
possessions. If you ask any historian what is the greatest historical
loss to mankind's base of knowledge in the history of the world, they
will say it was the loss of the Egyptian library at Alexandria. We lost
all of the treasures, all of the institutional memory of that ancient
age. And it took humanity literally hundreds of years to begin to
reaccumulate that knowledge and that understanding.
This endowment helps to preserve books. It helps to preserve
documents. It helps to preserve archival material. It helps to preserve
historical newspapers. It has produced films which have won Peabody
awards, Emmys, you name it. It does not serve the cultural elite of
this country. The cultural and economic elite of this country, any time
it wants, has access to this kind of material. They have got the bucks
to pay for it. They have the leisure time to experience it. And they
have the family history that makes children sensitive to it.
It is the average family in this country that does not live in a city
which has a great university, it does not live in a city with one of
the outstanding libraries in the country. Members of Congress take for
granted the fact we can go down to the National Archives, see the great
documents of our history. We think nothing of that. Most Americans
would give their eyeteeth to have that opportunity.
It is the small towns, it is the people of average means, it is the
people of average life experience who most need the benefits that this
appropriation produces.
Yet we are told we cannot afford that. We are told that by one of the
same Members who stood on the floor or stood on the floor of the
Committee on Appropriations just 3 days ago and argued that we ought to
continue subsidizing tobacco.
I ask my colleagues, what is a better investment in American tax
dollars? There is very little doubt in my mind. Has the Endowment
occasionally been embarrassed by an idiotic use of one of their grants?
Yes, they have. Have you ever been embarrassed? Has any Member of
Congress ever been embarrassed by an idiotic act that we ourselves have
committed or an act of our staff? Of course we have.
I wish any Member of this House had a batting average as good as the
National Endowment for the Arts or the Humanities. We make as many
mistakes in a day as they make in a year. Members can vote any way they
want.

[[Page H5162]]

The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey] has
expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. OBEY was allowed to proceed for 3
additional minutes.)
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, those of you who know me know that I often
quote my favorite poet, Archie the Cockroach. It is not my religious
bible, but it is my philosophical bible.
I want to read my colleagues something that Archie wrote a long time
ago: He wrote it about the movies, but you can just as easily say it in
reference to the arts or the humanities. He said this:

They are instinctively trying to preserve for the public
some kind of stuff that wins an audience away from the often
sordid surface of existence. They may do it badly. They may
do it obviously. They may do it crudely. But they do have a
hunch that what the millions want is to be shown that there
is something possible to the human race besides the dull
repetition of the triviality which is often the routine of
common existence. And every now and then they blunder into
doing something with just a touch of the universal.

Now, to me that is what the Endowment for the Arts and the Endowment
for the Humanities is all about. I would just suggest that if Members
want to save money, I can show them 50 line items in appropriation
bills that I will serve the American public. This is a tiny little
amount, but it is crucial to seeing to it that we can spread the basic
foundations of our society and western values as broadly as possible in
this society. Is it done error free? Of course not, because everyone is
human. But I say that the routine of common existence would be just a
little less rich without the services that this appropriation provides,
and this Congress would be out of its head to pass this amendment.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number
of words.
Mr. Chairman, many colleagues on both sides have stood up and said
that maybe it is just a little bit of money. National Endowment for the
Arts, which I did not get a chance to speak on in the last amendment,
it is only a little bit of money, $100 million a year. I swore that if
I ever spoke that a million dollars was a little bit of money, that I
would leave this body, because it is a lot of money and I think we need
to take that into account.
There are Members here and they have the right to that opinion that
government can do things better. I think Charlie the Cockroach,
whatever his name, would feel better if he had the right to control his
own destiny instead of other people controlling it. That $110 million a
year for the NEA and $100 million for the NEH adds up to a lot of
dollars. Let us take a 10-year period.
When the gentleman from Wisconsin talked about the real future and
the light of the future, I think the real light of this great country
was born on individualism, from people creating their own destiny, not
Federal Government. If we look at what the NEH does, have they done
some good things? Sure, I am sure they do. And the NEA, have they done
good things? Yes.
But when we take a look at what the real light is, is it giving back
taxpaying Americans dollars instead of sending it to Washington? You
have to borrow the money. That $200 million a year, you have to borrow
that money to be able to spend it and then make people think that you
are giving them a good deal.
I submit that it is not a good deal, Mr. Chairman. We have people in
San Diego, in my area like U.S.S. Grant Sharp, Adm. Grant Sharp, four-
star admiral, we have Wally Schirra, an astronaut. I would love the
humanities to come in and talk about their history. But we do that with
PBS and private funds. The Government does not have to do that.
The gentleman from Maine that talked about this great program in
Maine that they have. If it is so important to Maine, I have never seen
it. Joe Sixpack in my State or county has never seen it. Let people
from Maine, if it is so important, support it. Why should Joe Sixpack
from all the other districts fund this?
There are some great individual programs. The gentleman talked about
the B-2, a controversial issue. I would submit to take a look, is there
a need for the B-2? Is there a mission in the future for it? I say yes.
And if not, what would you do, spend another $12 billion just on the
R&D that goes on with what the new B-2 is or whatever replaces it? That
is going to cost more in those dollars.
I would submit that the gentleman from Wisconsin has not sat over the
top of Hanoi like I have and watched two B-52's go down in flames, with
the horror of watching those men die because they were flying in 40-
year-old airplanes. Yes, there is an issue. I think the perspective is
different.
But the perspective of the American people is not to have the Federal
Government do it. It is awful hard to outspend a liberal. We will give
a figure to balance the budget and you will give a higher figure. Then
you will say we are cutting, whether it is Medicare, Medicaid,
education and the environment or these programs, and look how wonderful
they are.
The President wants a $3 billion literacy program. Mr. Chairman, we
have 14 literacy programs in the Federal Government. What is wrong with
paying for one and fully funding it and getting rid of the
bureaucracies and getting rid of the bureaucracy of the NEA and funding
down the arts where parents and children and schools can make those
decisions? No, they want the Federal Government.
If you take a look at whether it is health care controlled by the
Federal Government, whether it is education controlled by the Federal
Government, or history standards controlled by the Federal Government
in which they had more study about Madonna and McCarthyism than they
did the Magna Carta, or whether it is private control of private
property. No, I am not talking about the Federal Government. I am
talking about the Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Engels
about control of everything that goes on in River City, in Washington,
DC and by Government.
I think it is time, Mr. Chairman, that we change those things. Yes,
the cockroach would be much happier if he had the destiny of his own
life to live instead of people that borrow money here that do not have
to pay it back, they do not, even the people they spend it on do not
have to pay it back. Americans have to pay it back.
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
(Mr. NADLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose this amendment to abolish
the National Endowment for the Humanities. This House seems intent on
doing an interesting day's work. First let us destroy our support for
the arts, that is in the morning; and in the afternoon let us destroy
the humanities.
That is a good day's work. The humanities are critical to any free
and democratic society. The study of history, the study of philosophy,
literature, religion, how are people supposed to make intelligent
decisions and govern ourselves if we do not support the study of
history and philosophy and literature and religion? The purpose of the
National Endowment for the Humanities is to promote this, to promote
research in education and the preservation of knowledge, to promote the
preservation of our cultural heritage. This House is willing to spend,
we are this year appropriating somewhere in the neighborhood of $270
billion to the Department of Defense for our physical defense.
One can think, as I do, that that is a little too much, but no one
will quibble that we should spend a lot of money for our physical
defense.

{time} 1330

But the NEH, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the
National Endowment for the Arts, that is money spent for our cultural
and civil defense, for our cultural heritage, so that we have a country
that is worth in every sense defending.
The NEH funds professional development for teachers to preserve our
heritage for the next generation. Fifty thousand teachers have
benefited from its summer seminars, and they have reached in turn 7\1/
2\ million students.
NEH grants are being used to fund multimedia database programs on the
Supreme Court, the Civil War and the philosophies and civilizations of
ancient Greece and Rome, from which we learn so much.

[[Page H5163]]

The endowment provides national leadership for efforts to digitize
and make more accessible such important texts and documents as the Dead
Sea Scrolls, ancient Egyptian papyrus fragments and the works of
Shakespeare. The endowment has preserved 750,000 brittle books and 55
million pages of American newspapers.
It is crucial to our efforts to preserve the writings and ideas of
American culture. In fact, the NEH is crucial to efforts to preserve
the writings of American Presidents, including those of George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Dwight Eisenhower.
I hear the gentleman from California saying we do not need the NEH to
do this; let people spend their own money to do it. Who would preserve
our cultural heritage? Who would spend the money to physically treat
books, physically and chemically treat books so that their pages do not
fall apart with age, books that are 50, 100, and 200 years old? The
private sector will not do it. Government has to do it because it is
essential that it be done to preserve our heritage. But the private
sector will not do that.
Do we want to eliminate funding for a program whose primary purpose
is to preserve American history and culture? We have cut funding for
this substantially. Two years ago the funding was $172 million, about
.01 percent of the budget. The current fiscal year it is being slashed
to $110 million, but that is not enough. They argue it must be
eliminated.
To argue that this is too large an investment to preserve our
cultural heritage is absurd. As was mentioned before, we voted for nine
B-2 bombers in the current budget that the Pentagon says it does not
need to defend us. One B-2 bomber, the cost of it, could fund the NEH
for a dozen years.
The NEA has made mistakes on grants, the NEH has made mistakes on
grants. Sure. But that is the real motive for eliminating them. But
that makes about as much sense as saying that people have cheated on
Medicare, some insurance companies have overbilled the Government, some
doctors have overbilled the Government, so let us eliminate Medicare.
No, let us have better protections.
The decisions that we make on spending are reflective of what kind of
a country it is we want. Do we want a Nation that values learning, that
rewards curiosity, that devotes resources to learning about the past so
that we know how to seek a better future? If that is the kind of Nation
we want, it is crucial we continue our commitment to the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues not to compound the damage we did
this morning on the NEA. Reject this amendment to eliminate the NEH.
Let us not be totally shameful today.
Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number
of words.
Mr. Chairman, I am from Ohio, and I think Ohio has a stake in this
debate because it is my colleague from Ohio who would like to eliminate
the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The charge has been made that this is an endowment which supports the
cultural elite. Now, it is true that the city of Cincinnati, OH, is one
of the great cities in this country. It is a city where the arts are
valued and the humanities are valued and where many wealthy people
contribute to both.
However, I represent a different part of Ohio. My part of Ohio is a
part of Ohio where the largest city is only 25,000 in number. In my
part of Ohio the median family income is $22,000 a year. My part of
Ohio needs the National Endowment for the Humanities. I can say that in
my district alone, since 1970, the National Endowment for the
Humanities has contributed nearly $80,000, but that has been used to
leverage almost $350,000.
In my small counties numerous worthy projects depend upon funding
from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In Athens County, WOUB
radio, Ohio University; the telecommunications center at Ohio
University; in Clinton County, Wilmington College benefits, as well as
does the local library; in Gallia County, the University of Rio Grande
and the French Art Colony; in Jackson County, the local library; in
Meigs County, the Pioneer and Historical Society benefits from the
National Endowment for the Humanities; in Ross County, the Ross County
Public Library and the Ross County Historical Society; in Scioto
County, my home county, the Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center
benefits; Shawnee State University, which is Ohio's newest and smallest
State university, benefits from the National Endowment for the
Humanities; in Vinton County, which is Ohio's smallest and poorest
county, the local library benefits; in Warren County, the county
library; in Washington County, Marietta College and the local library.
On and on and on.
These are not cultural elites. These are citizens in small
communities in one of the most historic and beautiful parts of our
Nation who need the National Endowment for the Humanities in order to
continue very worthy programs.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask my colleague from Ohio to reconsider, to
reconsider this misguided attempt to eliminate the National Endowment
for the Humanities.
Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite
number of words.
Mr. Chairman, the National Endowment for the Humanities was
established more than three decades ago because, in the words of the
Columbus, OH, Dispatch, democracy demands wisdom and vision in its
citizens.
Now, the more responsible amendment that we should be debating today
would be one that would restore the $40 million to this budget that was
cut in this bill from the President's request or the $14 million cut
from last year's funding level. That is what we should be doing, and we
could have compelling arguments to do that and, I would think, win on
that debate. But, instead, here we have to defend a program that has
justified itself for 30 years, that has made a difference in almost
every community across the country.
In Alexandria, VA, right across the Potomac River, 150 years ago
Alexandria was part of Washington, DC, but there was a vote to
retrocede. Because the African-American citizens could not vote, that
vote won, and Alexandria went on to become one of the principal slave
capitals of the South. For the next 150 years there was a struggle that
required the highest levels of courage and character and leadership on
the part of our African-American citizens to transform our community
and that of northern Virginia and the Washington metropolitan area.
They had to risk beatings, they had to risk persecution and oppression
when they would go in and integrate libraries, integrate the school
system, the stores, the drugstores; and over a long history, they
succeeded.

Now, why is that relevant to this discussion? Because it is the
National Endowment for the Humanities that is bringing that history
alive to the children of our school system, black and white alike, and
throughout the Washington metropolitan area.
Now, it took years for the citizens of our community to meet the
exacting standards of the National Endowment for the Humanities. But
once they met them, then we were able to draw upon substantial sums of
other money to make history come alive, to enable our schoolchildren to
realize the strong shoulders on which they stand today. That is what
inspires leadership, that is what keeps our country a great country,
that understanding of history, that understanding of the kind of
character and courage that gave us the foundation upon which we
progress.
NEH has proven itself in the same way that the principles of this
country have proven themselves. But it is integral to sustaining our
principles as a democratic free country that believes in free speech,
that believes in education, that believes in inclusiveness of all of
our citizens.
NEH needs to be expanded, not cut back, but certainly the least we
can do for our country and its people is to defeat this amendment
today.
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I will not use the full 5 minutes but I do rise in
opposition to the Chabot amendment. I urge our colleagues to defeat it
and to defeat it resoundingly.
In the earlier debate we talked about the importance of the arts, of
music to our country. If the arts and music

[[Page H5164]]

touch the heart of our country, certainly the humanities enhance the
soul of our great country.
The National Endowment for the Humanities supports scholarly
research, education and public programs in the humanities. The NEH
preserves our national heritage by helping to keep our historical
record intact. It builds citizenship by providing a way for citizens to
study and understand principles and practices of American democracy. It
strengthens our communities through State councils and local grants.
``No, the marketplace,'' as Ken Burns said in his recent article,
``will not produce the good works of the endowments.'' He said further,
``It is my sincere belief that anything that threatens these
institutions weakens our country.''
I hope that my colleagues, when they vote, will vote to strengthen
our country. In his article, Ken Burns, and I want to quote because I
think it would be interesting to Members, also said, ``Without a doubt,
my film series on the Civil War or Baseball could not have been made
without the endowment. It not only provided one of the largest grants,
thereby attracting other donators, but some of its grants to archival
institutions made possible the restoration of historical photographs we
used,'' he said, ``to tell our story.''
He further said, and I will close with these remarks, ``Early on,
Thomas Jefferson and the other founding fathers knew that the pursuit
of happiness did not mean a hedonistic search for pleasure in the
marketplace but an active involvement of the mind in the higher aspects
of human endeavor; namely, education, music, the arts and history.''
I urge my colleagues, Mr. Chairman, in the spirit of our Founding
Father Thomas Jefferson, to support the humanities and vote no on the
very destructive Chabot amendment.
Mr. DELLUMS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by my
distinguished colleague, and in so doing I would like to applaud the
comments of the two previous speakers, the gentleman from northern
Virginia and the gentlewoman from California, for their eloquent
remarks in defense of their position opposing this amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I would make a few observations. First of all, while I
stand in vehement opposition to the amendment offered by my
distinguished colleague, I think in one sense he has done this body a
great service, and that is to provide an opportunity for many of my
colleagues to march into the well of this House and to inform other
Members of Congress and the American people of all of the vital
services provided by the Endowment for the Humanities, and to do so
with great eloquence and great precision.
Second, I would like to make this observation. A couple of weeks ago
the Committee on National Security brought the military budget for this
fiscal year to the floor of the U.S. Congress. In my capacity as
ranking member of that committee I tried to point out, on more than one
occasion, that one of our significant vital national security
interests, Mr. Chairman, is a well trained, well educated, well
informed citizenry that is capable of engaging the economic, cultural,
and civic affairs of our Nation.
I would argue with my distinguished colleague that this amendment
striking all of the funds for the National Endowment for the Humanities
strikes at the heart of a vital national security interest of this
Nation, and that is to have an informed, vitalized, intelligent,
capable citizenry in this country.

{time} 1345

One of the previous speakers, arguing in defense of this amendment,
challenged some of the activities of the National Endowment of the
Humanities because it opened us up to ideas. Only an ignorant society,
Mr. Chairman, would run from ideas.
What makes us brilliant, what makes us capable is that we expose our
youth and our children to the magnificence and wonder of great ideas.
The day that we begin to censure ideas and to censure thought is the
day that we go back into the 19th century and do not walk into the 21st
century.
Mr. Chairman, one of the greatest things that we have is our
children; and one of our greatest contributions to our children is a
contribution to their education, allowing them to function and to cope
in a society, in a world that is rapidly changing, growing with
increasing complexity and increasing challenges.
I would suggest, with those observations, Mr. Chairman, that all of
my colleagues on both sides of the aisle reject this amendment and say
to our people, young and old alike, across the myriad of perspectives
in this country, that we would not strike at a very important, vital
national security interest of this country, and that is the education
and the information that needs to flow to the people of this country.
Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, first of all, I strongly oppose the amendment of my
colleague, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Chabot], and I want to tell
this Congress why we should focus our attention on doing just the
opposite. We should focus our attention on trying to centralize the
amount of moneys we are going to give to the humanities.
I have heard many arguments this morning, Mr. Chairman. Many of them
seek to sort of disperse the power and the money for the humanities.
That is a wrong approach, Mr. Chairman. What it does is it proliferates
weakness.
My colleagues say they want to give it in block grants to the States?
That is one proposal, to give States a block grant. It does not make
sense, in that there would be no centralized entity to focus, to
leverage, to try to get the most of the small amount of Federal money
that they are now dispensing.
First of all, if someone in this House is against an idea, it does
not make sense to try and kill that idea through appropriations,
because through appropriations we have never looked into the rationale
of this program. We really do not know exactly what they do.
We do know that many of the things that they do are very, very good
and some of the things that the National Endowment purports to help
this country with are not good. That is so with all of our programs.
Our beloved leader and ranking member has tried very hard for about
25 or 30 years to build the arts and humanities in this country; and,
with one fell swoop, we are going to wipe out both of these efforts. It
does not make sense. What they are doing is dissipating the amount of
moneys we have already put into this area, and now they are going to
say they are not good, they are not good enough for our scrutiny, so we
are going to wipe them out.
First of all, how is any school system or any other entity in this
country going to be able to leverage the moneys that the Federal
Government has put into the humanities or that it purports to put in
there? There is no one agency in this country that can leverage that
money as much as they have done it.
So they strengthen our communities and, most of all, they seek to
maintain a historical perspective, Mr. Chairman. And we must, we must
maintain that historical perspective. If we do not, we cannot keep the
legacy of this country going, and it must be kept going. We must
continue to remember what has been done in this country.
Mr. Chairman, I would just like to ask a question: Whether or not
when we disburse this money to every different entity or agency that we
can find, just to get it away from the National Endowment for the
Humanities, they are going to leverage in different ways, they are
going to have a diverse kind of programming. We do not really know what
we are going to get, a mishmash.
So, in closing, Mr. Chairman, we can stimulate local economies
through the National Endowment. It forces the people who are teaching.
Are we going to have 59 or 60 ways of teaching? The National Endowment
for the Humanities has brought in all of these people who are offering
or trying to do something in the area of the humanities and giving them
a series of forums and workshops to teach them ways to do this.
I beg of this House, Mr. Chairman, to defeat this amendment, because
it is one that will kill the humanities movement in this country.
Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the amendment. I was
back in my office listening to the debate, and I

[[Page H5165]]

really felt that I would not forgive myself if I did not come to the
floor and add my voice to those who were saying that this is not an
amendment that this House should vote for.
I think this is a basic philosophical difference. Some of my
colleagues, well-intentioned, have the attitude that any government is
bad, that the Federal Government is bad, that somehow or other
government and programs of government are inherently evil.
I do not come from that perspective. We are one great Nation. We are
50 States, but we are one great Nation. And, certainly, the National
Endowment for the Humanities teaches us that we are one great Nation,
we have so much in common, that there is so much to preserve, that
there is so much that we need as a Nation to bring us closer together.
The National Endowment for the Humanities does that. It is the
largest source of support for the humanities nationwide. Federal
support is vital in order for the infrastructure of humanities to
continue to exist.
The next largest source of giving for humanities is the Mellon
Foundation, which gives about $30 million annually, compared to $110
million for the NEH.
Government is important when the private sector cannot do the kinds
of things that we need it to do. The NEH, to me, is public and private
partnership working at its best. It gives grants that stimulate various
humanities projects. Without these grants, without the seed money,
these projects would never come to fruition.
We are one great Nation. We are a great country. We have a Federal
Government. The Federal Government should be doing the kinds of things,
in my opinion, that the National Endowment for the Humanities does.
Now projects like collecting and editing the papers of the Nation's
Presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Grant, Eisenhower, would more than
likely stop production, many would close down all together if the NEH
was abolished.
NEH funding is often the lifeblood of support for such large, complex
research undertakings. A half million American school children would be
deprived of the benefits of being taught by the thousands of humanities
teachers who each year refresh their knowledge and understanding of
humanities in our great Nation by attending NEH-sponsored summer
seminars and institutes.

The NEH, as my colleagues have said, is a good buy. The cost to each
American is only 42 cents a year, which is one one-hundredth of 1
percent of the Federal budget. The activities of the State humanities
councils all across America would probably close, most would go out of
business, if this amendment were to pass.
Some of my colleagues might say, ``Well, so what? If it cannot be
sustained by the private sector, let it close.'' But I think this is a
very, very shortsighted attitude. If things can be sustained by the
private sector, then they well ought to be. But, again, if we can have
this public-private partnership that works, why would we not want to
reward success?
This is a program that has been working. It has not been a failure.
Where there are Government programs that have been failures, we should
eliminate them. When there is too much fat in the budget, we should cut
the fat. But when there is a program that is working, like the National
Endowment for the Humanities, we ought to be strengthening these
programs, not cutting their legs out from under them.
Access to humanities programming would be closed off to millions of
Americans in rural areas who are less well off. I represent an urban
area, and we would probably have these things continuing, but people in
rural areas would not be able to do that. Without NEH, who else would
have provided the vital seed money to nurture a landmark event in our
Nation's cultural life like the Library of America series? Those of us
who are familiar with that series know how important and vital it is
and what a vital role the NEH played in that.
So let me just say, in summation, that I think that this amendment is
a very, very shortsighted amendment. Again, where there is fat in the
budget, we ought to cut it out. Where the private sector can fill in,
then Government ought not to do it. But when we have a public-private
partnership that works, this kind of funding works, this Congress ought
to be saying thank you and we ought to be strengthening it and
nurturing it and, yes, even adding additional dollars to it, rather
than trying to cut it out.
I do not come from the philosophy that Government is inherently bad
or evil. I think we need Government. We do not need too much
Government, but we do not need too little Government either. And where
Government provides vital resources such as the NEH, those resources
should be supported by this Congress, not have the legs cut out from
under them.
(Mr. REGULA asked and was given permission to speak out of order.)

Legislative Program

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, I rise to advise the Members that we will
conclude debate on this today but will roll the vote until next
Tuesday, so that those Members that have airplanes to catch, there will
be no more votes today. We will just go on until the debate is
concluded, and at that point we will roll the vote.
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last
word.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, parliamentary inquiry.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentlewoman from Texas must yield to the gentleman
from Illinois for the parliamentary inquiry.
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from
Illinois [Mr. Yates].
Mr. YATES. Mr. Chairman, did I understand the chairman to say that
there would be speaking as long as Members wanted to speak? Is that
only on this amendment or on other amendments?
Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, if the gentlewoman will yield, this
amendment only. When the debate on this amendment is concluded, we will
roll the vote and rise.
Mr. YATES. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask one question. I have just
been told that one Member of the leadership of the gentleman from Ohio
[Mr. Regula] has indicated that if this bill goes down on final
passage, that all Democratic projects are going to be stripped out of
the bill. I would like to know if that kind of blackmail is going on on
the part of his leadership or not.
Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, I know absolutely nothing about that, and I
think that is misinformation. There has been nothing of that type by
way of information or discussion transmitted to me. It is totally news
to me.
Mr. OBEY. I would certainly take the gentleman at his word. I would
simply ask that he check with his own Whip's office to make certain
that that is not the case. If the majority party wants to really blow
up this place, that is a good way to do it; and I do not think it would
be very smart to try it.

{time} 1400

Mr. REGULA. If the gentlewoman will continue to yield, I think that
the gentleman knows me well enough to know that that is not the way we
approach things. He can see that in the way the bill is constructed. It
is very bipartisan.
Mr. OBEY. If the gentlewoman will continue to yield, I know that is
the way the gentleman approaches things, but as he knows sometimes
things are decided above our pay grade, and I think we need to know
whether we are operating in the atmosphere of reasonableness or of
sharks.
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Would the Chair please provide me the
amount of time I have remaining?
The CHAIRMAN. The gentlewoman from Texas has 4 minutes remaining of
her 5 minutes.
(By unanimous consent, Ms. Jackson-Lee of Texas was allowed to
proceed for an additional 1 minute.)
The CHAIRMAN. The gentlewoman from Texas is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I respect my colleagues who
have had a great deal of concern with

[[Page H5166]]

both the National Endowment for the Arts and with the National
Endowment for the Humanities. I know that many have done it out of an
earnestness of what they believe the values of this Nation should be.
But even though with respect for their position, I cannot accept it.
Just as I thought the amendments dealing with the elimination of the
National Endowment for the Arts were foolish and foolhardy, both the
amendment to eliminate and the amendment that did not pass that would
have in essence eliminated under the Ehlers amendment the NEA, this
amendment, the National Endowment for the Humanities, to eliminate it
is similarly foolish and foolhardy.
Might I share with Members as a youngster growing up in America how
important it was as the learning process unfolded before me to
understand that I was not alone with respect to my history. I was not
alone as an African-American in this Nation without history or roots.
Although the educational system as I was growing up was not as detailed
and as clear about the richness of African-American history, I am very
proud today to say that many research projects that have been funded by
the National Endowment for the Humanities have given depth to the rich
and diverse culture of this Nation.
It has given depth to the very rich Indian American culture, the
culture of the original natives of this great land. It has funded
projects so that our schoolchildren could understand the value of
American Indian history. It also has responded to the emerging Hispanic
culture and in its research funding grants has seen the value of
training teachers who understand multi-culturalism.
Tears came to my eyes in 1977 when an account by Alex Haley that was
then fictionalized into a movie called ``Roots'' began to unfold for
all of America what the slave history was about and the subsequent
history of the 1800's, and then the entrenchment of this divide in this
Nation, but yet the joys that came about.
I, too, celebrated in that fiction, fiction as it was put to story in
a movie, but yet as it was told in truth in Alex Haley's book
``Roots.'' It was exciting for those of us who had finished most of our
education because, sad to say, in the 1950's and 1960's, there was
little diverse history taught in our schools. But the National
Endowment for the Humanities, independent and free as it is, with
public dollars, when this country began to accept the multiplicity of
its very diverse culture, began to train teachers to teach those of us
who wanted to learn about the richness of this history.
He is now telling us that he would cut off the opportunity for my
children and grandchildren to be able to believe in a Nation that is so
diverse. How many of us fully understood, even as it was told, the
Civil War story? But yet the NEH had enough courage to support the
Burns' effort in this Civil War story that so many of us looked at on
PBS, the Public Broadcasting System.
Likewise, the NEH supported a documentary history of the emancipation
from 1861 to 1867. It included the fact that we in Texas only knew of
that emancipation in 1865, two years after the emancipation in 1863.
But it had to be an independent body that helped all of the Nation
understand what emancipation meant.
And so I am saddened that we have this divide and that we would use
the issue of arts and the issue of the humanities as a wedge issue and
a budget-cutting issue when in fact, as I have said before, a people
who continue to trample on its arts, its culture and its history are
doomed to perish.
I believe that this amendment will bring about a perishing of the
rich cultural diversity and the long and rich history that this Nation
is developing. Vote down this amendment and support the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to strike the
requisite number of words in order to engage in a colloquy on an
unrelated matter with the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula], the
chairman of the subcommittee.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from
Nebraska?
There was no objection.
Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate this opportunity to engage
the gentleman from Ohio in a colloquy to receive his views and to
receive and understand the subcommittee's views on the nature of the
matching requirements that will apply to the completion of the Lewis
and Clark Trail Interpretive Center in Nebraska. It is my understanding
that the matching requirements for the additional fiscal year 1998
appropriations for the center, plus the previously appropriated
$391,000 in total can be matched by cash, materials, and services.
While it is my understanding that a substantial cash contribution will
be required, it is further my understanding that such materials,
services and activities in non-cash contributions could include
contributed architectural and engineering plans or planning activities,
construction materials, landscape planning and plant materials, survey
activities, utilities installation and/or relevant new artwork
creations.
Mr. Chairman, is my understanding of the nature and the anticipated
matching contributions for the center correct?
Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. BEREUTER. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
Mr. REGULA. As the gentleman knows, I have held all these types of
interpretive centers to strict cost-share requirements including
substantial cash. That is because we have so many requests and we try
to stretch our dollars. However, the other services the gentleman
detailed are also acceptable as a portion of the matching contribution
necessary to meet the subcommittee's requirements.
Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the distinguished chairman of the
subcommittee for his statement, patience, assistance and good will, and
I also thank his staff for similar reasons.
Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite
number of words.
Mr. Chairman, I do not intend to prolong this discussion nor this
debate. But I think one of the reasons that so many people have spoken
on this particular issue is because of the depth of their feelings with
reference to how effective the National Endowment for the Humanities
has been. In my own city, the city of Chicago, a city that is the
essence of diversity, a city that has ethnic enclaves all over its
landscape, through this kind of programming people have been able to
come together to interact, to explore, to take hard, good looks, to be
involved in things like Imagine Chicago, to be involved in programs at
the Newberry Library or to be involved in finding out how other groups
actually live and function in this great Nation that we call the United
States of America.
I would think that any diminution of these activities would go
against the grain, because one of the things I have learned is that in
order to make democracy real, there is a need to understand how the
other fellow thinks, how the other person feels, even the opportunity
to walk in his or her footsteps and shoes. I would stand with all of
those who have suggested that this program, and for the money that is
expended on it, is worth its weight in gold, because it provides the
golden opportunity for Americans to truly learn about each other and
the contributions that we have all made. I join with those who are in
opposition and say let us keep America interacting rather than shutting
Americans away from each other.
Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite
number of words.
(Mrs. MINK of Hawaii asked and was given permission to revise and
extend her remarks.)
Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Mr. Chairman, I have always understood that the
most important obligation that each of us as a private citizen in
America has is to somehow translate the history of this country and to
make sure that the children that come in the future have a full and
knowledgeable understanding of the history of this Nation and what
makes it great, what makes it operate, and who the people are in the
length and breadth of this land.
In order for the people of this House who represent this Nation to
fulfill that solemn obligation, to extend who we are to the future,
this Congress 30 years ago decided that we had to have

[[Page H5167]]

a National Foundation for the Humanities in order to make sure that the
history of this Nation and our understanding of it as it began and as
it grew and as it is today and as we would like it to be in the future
has the awesome support and foundation in a national kind of
responsibility, and that is why the Endowment was created.
Each of us represents about 600,000 or 700,000 persons. We cannot
begin to really express each and every person within our constituency,
though that is our obligation. And so as we come to the House to meet
our challenges, to extend the security of this Nation through
education, we look to the National Endowment for the Humanities to help
us in this endeavor.
And so at this moment in our debate, to kill this national
organization seems to me to not understand why it was created in the
first place. It is to take each of us, 435 Members of Congress, each
from diverse backgrounds, each from very different districts. Most of
us cannot comprehend the districts that some Members represent. But
surely we are the product of our district, our education, our cultural
experience, our academic training and so forth and we come here with
the responsibility to represent that constituency. But in this House,
we know that we have far greater responsibilities than our own
district. We have to represent the Nation. This Nation has a huge
responsibility, and, that is, to unite this diverse entity called
America and to understand it and to make sure that those things that
are important, that began it continue on, to motivate our young people,
to carry forth the noble traditions and principles of this democracy.
If we simply let the States and the school systems and the private
entities decide what is important for us as a Nation on an individual
basis in our cities and in our school systems and in our States, we
will lose that very important influence of the national unity of this
country.
This is America, the United States of 50 States and territories. It
is our obligation as the Federal Congress to understand our
responsibility. That is exactly what the National Endowment for the
Humanities is, to bring forth that rich history of our country, to
understand the diversity of this Nation, to pull all these diverse
people together, and to let us march down into history as one people
with the fundamental principles of Americanism and freedom and liberty
and all the things that are important for the future of this world into
the essence and spirit of America. That is what the National Endowment
for the Humanities stands for. To destruct it and to say, well, private
sectors and the individual States can carry this forward, they cannot.
Because no individual private foundation, no individual State can
represent the spirit of America in the way that it must be represented
if we are to be one country and one nation.

{time} 1415

So I plead with those who seek to destruct this organization to
understand what they are doing. It is not just to save money, it is not
to try to express some conservative belief that less government is
better government. It is a failure to understand our individual citizen
responsibility that we represent the United States and that we have a
fundamental responsibility to carry forward to the future the history,
the understanding, the diversity, the culture, what makes us a special
people in this universe.
I ask my colleagues not to support this amendment.
Mr. SAWYER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Mr. Chairman, I thank my colleague from Ohio for the work that has
gone into this bill; I thank my colleague from Cincinnati for his
effort that has gone into this amendment. I do not agree with it, but I
must say that there have been few amendments brought in recent weeks
that have provoked a more constructive dialog on this floor than this
one. It has invoked the deepest sense of what it means to be an
American.
As my colleagues know, 4 months ago this body in its common judgment
decided to abandon this Capitol to go away to a small place in Hershey,
PA to talk about those things that bind us together. We talked about
the things that were important to us as Americans representing 260
million Americans in all of our diversity. We came together and
listened to David McCullough, the noted historian, who in his moving
keynote address invoked the words of Daniel Boorstin, another noted
historian and a former Librarian of Congress, when he suggested that
one cannot grow a garden by planting cut flowers. His point was that we
need to understand the genesis of where we come from in order to have a
flourishing garden. He was suggesting that we need to know where we
have been in order to have a sense of where we are going.
We have been in this place before. We have been in a time when this
body and this Nation, locked in a time of change, has been at
intellectual war with itself. And yet we have known that we can grow
beyond that and to conduct this conflict of ideas in a way that is
civil and it makes some sense to the Nation.
A hundred years ago in 1892, Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland
conducted a campaign one of the most lackluster campaigns in the
Nation's history at a time when it may have been more important to
understand what the causes of history were at that time. They, like
many of us, found themselves in a time when political leaders knew more
than they dared to say and who worried more than they dared to show. It
was a time when the illustrious Committee of Ten came forward to make
recommendations to this Nation to bring about healing in a time of
change, and the Subcommittee on History, which included even Woodrow
Wilson relatively early in his career, argued that the importance of
history, just as Boorstin and McCullough suggested, was at the heart of
what it took to be Americans.
Today, we face the same kind of demands. The Bradley Commission on
History, a decade ago, articulated the same kinds of things when they
suggested, as we need to derive from the National Endowment for the
Humanities, the importance of developing a shared sense of humanity, to
understand ourselves and others, to understand how we resemble and
differ from one another, to question stereotypes of ourselves and
others, to discern the difference between fact and conjecture, to grasp
the complexity of historical cause, to distrust the simple answer and
the dismissive explanation, to respect particularity and avoid false
analogy, to recognize the abuse of historical lessons, and to
understand that ignorance of the past may make us prisoners of it, to
recognize that not all problems have solutions, to be prepared for the
irrational, the accidental, in human affairs, and to grasp the power of
ideas and character in history.
Perhaps no one said it better than did Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
who in addressing the graduating class of the Harvard Law School in the
1880s suggested that perhaps the greatest service that one can do in a
democracy is to see the future as far as one may, to feel the force
behind every detail, to try to hammer out products that are sound and
come back to seek to make them first rate, and to let the results speak
for themselves. No more cogent articulation of the importance of
understanding where we have been and where we are going has been put
before the Nation.
The work that has gone into this bill is enormously important. I look
at the kind of effort that has gone into the national heritage
corridors, living examples of our history, understanding the forces
that bound us together a century and a century and a half ago and that
are every bit as important to us today. In concrete terms they
represent what the National Endowment for the Humanities represents in
conceptual terms, our living history embodied in the work that we do
today.
I thank the chairman for the work that has led to this bill. I thank
my colleague, the gentleman from Ohio, for provoking this debate, and I
thank all my colleagues for listening to it.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, if we eliminate the Federal commitment
to the arts by eliminating or severely reducing the National Endowment
for the Arts, I believe we do a great disservice to the American
people. Likewise, if we eliminate our commitment to the Humanities, we
do a great disservice to our entire democracy.
Investments in our cultural institutions, like the NEA and NEH, are
investments in the livability of our communities. For just 38 cents per
year per American, NEA-supported programs help enhance the quality of
life for

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Americans in every community in this country. For just 68 cents per
year per American, NEH-supported programs to preserve our heritage by
keeping our historical records intact and building citizenship by
providing citizens to study and understand principles and practices of
American democracy. In fact, Congress established the NEH because
``Democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens.''
But the NEA and NEH do not perform this important function alone--the
Nation's cultural support system is a complex structure pieced together
from many different sources, including earned income, private
donations, corporate donations, and government grants. The cultural
heritage of our communities rely upon all those sources to remain
whole--including the Federal commitment. It's the partnership formed by
all these entities, from private investors, to cities, States, and the
Federal Government, that makes the system work.
Adequately funding the National Endowment for the Arts, in
particular, is absolutely critical to the State of Oregon, which has
suffered in recent years from cutbacks at the State and local levels.
Portland and other cities in Oregon have managed to make this work by
using public funds to leverage as much private investment as possible.
Portland arts groups manage to attain about 68 percent of their
financial resources from the box office, which is higher than the
national average of 50 percent. Portland companies have stepped up to
the plate--doubling their investment between 1990 and 1995. The public
investment, particularly the investment from the NEA, is absolutely
critical to preserving these opportunities.
Why is it important to preserve these cultural investments? A
commitment to culture pays many dividends--dividends that promote our
economic development and our understanding of the world around us.
Economically, an investment in culture as helped promotes tourism.
People flock to cities that support the arts and humanities, benefiting
hotels, convention centers, restaurants, and countless other businesses
related to entertainment and tourism. In fact, the nonprofit arts
industry generates $36.8 billion annually in economic activity,
supports 1.3 million jobs, and returns $3.4 billion to the Federal
Government in income taxes and an additional $1.2 billion in State and
local tax revenue.
An investment in culture also helps previously disenfranchised groups
gain access to new cultural experiences. The NEA, for example, provides
fun and educational arts programs for children that help students and
teachers develop arts, environment, and urban planning curricula.
Public funds, like those from the NEA, are also critical to keeping
ticket prices low, giving lower income individuals and seniors the
opportunity to attend cultural events. If ticket prices reflected the
entire cost of the event, cultural events would by necessity be denied
many of our citizens, especially the young and elderly.
We won't be able to balance the budget by eliminating spending on our
Nation's cultural heritage--and if we do so, we will lose much more as
a society and a nation than we would ever gain in deficit reduction.
This approach is shortsighted and doesn't recognize the long-term
economic and social benefits an investment in culture convey to our
communities and the Nation as a whole.
The President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities recently rleased
a report that could help focus our priorities for American cultural
resources, if we listen to their recommendations--restoring Federal
funding for cultural activities; enhancing the ability of the
Endowments to attract and accept gifts; and ensuring that our Tax Code
helps encourage charitable contributions.
We have the tools, infrastructure and innovative spirit in place to
make communities across the Nation more livable through cultural
opportunities. What we need to promote is a national commitment to
improving the livability of our communities by investing in culture. We
can develop and promote that national commitment through the NEA and
the NEH.
Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, if a civilization is judged by its
culture, Republicans have gone a long way toward destroying America
with their actions in the past 2 days. Yesterday the GOP voted to
eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, which makes theater,
symphonies, and art programs available to Americans across the Nation.
Today, Republicans are trying to eliminate the National Endowment for
the Humanities, which plays a vital role in advancing the educational
and cultural health of our Nation, and in preserving the landmarks of
our history. The NEH has made possible a wide range of activities to
improve the quality of education and indeed, the very quality of life
in communities throughout the country.
Let me tell you about just one of the projects that could not have
happened without the help of the NEH. The Yale-New Haven Teacher's
Institute brings public school teachers from New Haven together with
faculty from Yale University and gives them the opportunity for in-
depth study of a variety of subjects. It gives teachers the opportunity
to bring new materials back to their students in the public schools of
New Haven and add to their curriculum.
This project is seen as a model for collaborative efforts of
universities and public schools to improve education throughout the
United States. Yet it may not have happened without a $750,000
challenge grant from the NEH--which spurred a fundraising drive of $3
million in private funds to permanently endow this development program.
The NEH and NEA make up just a tiny portion of our budget--and that
investment pays off in so many ways, spurring jobs and private
investment and preserving our heritage for generations to come. Who
knows how many children have had their interest sparked in a whole new
subject thanks to an NEH sponsored program. Don't put out that spark.
Don't destroy our heritage. Vote against destroying the NEH.
The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Chabot].
The question was taken; and the Chairman announced that the noes
appeared to have it.
Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to House Resolution 181, further proceedings
on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Chabot] will
be postponed.
Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.
The motion was agreed to.
Accordingly, the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr.
Chabot) having assumed the chair, Mr. LaTourette, Chairman of the
Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union, reported that
that Committee, having had under consideration the bill, (H.R. 2107),
making appropriations for the Department of the Interior and related
agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, l998, and for other
purposes, had come to no resolution thereon.

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