[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 100 (Tuesday, July 15, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H5193]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   EXPRESSING OPPOSITION TO THE INTERIOR APPROPRIATIONS BILL WITHOUT 
               PROVISION FOR CONTINUED FUNDING OF THE NEA

  (Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to reluctantly oppose the 
Interior appropriations bill we will be voting on today because it 
contains no funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. The rule 
did not allow us to have a vote, an up-or-down vote, on NEA on the 
grounds that the NEA was not authorized. However, later today we will 
be voting on an appropriations bill that has at least 40 unauthorized 
and protected measures in it. I believe if we had had an up-or-down 
vote on the NEA, that it would have been fully funded for the next 
year.
  The Federal support for the arts is an incredibly worthwhile 
investment, and as many of our Members know, students with 4 years of 
arts study score 59 points higher on their verbal scores and 45 points 
higher on the math portion of their SAT's than students with no arts 
classes.
  Recent studies about the development of the human brain show the 
importance of arts for early childhood development. At the University 
of California at Irvine, researchers found that music training is far 
superior to computer instruction in dramatically enhancing children's 
abstract reasoning skills.

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