[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 122 (Monday, September 15, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9303-S9332]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 
                                  1998

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Roberts). Under the previous order, the 
Senate will now resume consideration of H.R. 2107, which the clerk will 
report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 2107) making appropriations for the Department 
     of the Interior and related agencies for the fiscal year 
     ending September 30, 1998.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.


            Excepted Committee Amendment on Page 46, Line 15

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending question is the committee 
amendment on page 46, line 15.
  The distinguished Senator from Washington is recognized.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, the majority leader has already pointed 
out what he hopes will be the schedule in connection with this and 
other bills during the course of the week. As he said, there will not 
be any votes on any amendments to this bill today, but

[[Page S9304]]

through most of last week, we expressed our views that today would 
present a wonderful opportunity to debate what may very well be the 
most controversial of all of the elements in the bill: the 
appropriation for the National Endowment for the Arts.

  The notices that I have received in connection with amendments 
include more on that subject, those which are to be more liberal with 
the National Endowment than the bill has been and those wishing to be 
more conservative or to restrict its use or even to abolish its 
appropriation, have stated that they will produce such amendments.
  We have asked as many of those Members to be present sometime during 
today's session of the Senate as possible. Most of them on Friday 
indicated that they would be able to be here today. Obviously, as the 
majority leader said, today gives them an opportunity to debate their 
amendments and to state their views on the National Endowment for the 
Arts in full and at leisure, where tomorrow may be somewhat more 
hectic.
  So I hope that all of them who are in or around the Capitol and the 
staffs of all of those Senators who have an interest in the subject 
will urge them to come to the floor, offer their amendments, speak to 
the National Endowment for the Arts, complete much of the debate on the 
subject today so that we can vote tomorrow on that subject.
  Having said that, Mr. President, noticing that no such Senators are 
present today, I have remarks on a subject of importance--vital 
importance--to the people of the State of Washington, one that has a 
high local profile and one that has also been of interest to the 
administration to the extent that it made a specific reference to it in 
its budget presentation this year. So I will ask the indulgence of the 
President and will make my remarks with respect to the Elwha River dams 
at this point.
  Mr. President, during the course of the last week, I said publicly 
that I would consider supporting removal of one of two dams on the 
Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. Specifically, 
with important conditions attached, I can support legislation that 
would allow the removal of the smaller downriver dam. As this 
represents something of a change in my position, it warrants a more 
detailed explanation on my part--what this new position means and, just 
as importantly, what it does not mean.
  For many years, national environmental groups, the Clinton 
administration, much of the media in the Pacific Northwest, and many 
Northwest elected officials have pushed for the removal of both dams on 
the Elwha River.
  In 1992, I reluctantly supported legislation to begin the process of 
having the Government study and acquire both of these dams with an eye 
toward removing them at some time in the future. Even so, it is no 
surprise to anyone from Washington State to hear me say today that I 
have been less than excited about this proposal. While I always have 
been enthusiastic about the Federal Government's purchasing these two 
dams from a local paper company, I have been skeptical that Elwha River 
dam removal will provide significant benefit to our salmon resources.
  For years, I have been told that 100-pound salmon used to fill the 
Elwha River, and that if we just removed these two dams, those big 
salmon would return.
  While that is the proponents' most compelling argument--perhaps their 
only argument--for removal, I fear that it is one with the promises 
that have caused us to spend some $3 billion on the Columbia River, 
with little discernible effect, except on our power costs. If dams are 
the reason that there are no 100-pound salmon swimming in the Elwha 
River, why are there no huge salmon in dozens of other Olympic 
Peninsula rivers that have never been dammed? Will we waste our money 
on the Elwha as we have on the Columbia?
  As you can tell, I have severe doubts about the wisdom of knocking 
down either of these dams under the guise of benefit to the salmon. I 
am quite certain, however, that there are other clear costs to their 
removal. Taxpayers must pay the huge costs of that removal. Power 
generation will be lost, and in the case of the Elwha River Dams, 
serious questions remain about potential damage to the city of Port 
Angeles' water supply. As I weigh these costs against the potential 
benefits to salmon, I have almost always sided against dam removal.

  Unfortunately, the issue isn't as simple as a cost-benefit analysis. 
If it were, the costs of removing the two dams would certainly outweigh 
the potential benefit to the salmon. But, as I say, it is not just that 
simple anymore. There is a wild card to this issue that makes me 
nervous, a wild card that makes me want to act now, a wild card that, 
if played, could have a devastating effect on the Port Angeles 
community.
  The desire of the Interior Secretary to tear down a dam, a proposal 
he has advocated consistently, together with the very real and growing 
threat that a Federal judge, or the Federal Energy Regulatory 
Commission, may order the removal of Elwha River Dams without 
congressional approval, present real threats to the community, are 
beyond our control and cannot be ignored.
  A court- or agency-ordered removal may well impose all of the costs 
of removing the dams on the local community. Jobs would be destroyed, 
and Port Angeles' supply of clean drinking water would be threatened. 
The risk of court or agency action is too great and will leave the 
local community in a terrible position if a judge or Washington, DC, 
bureaucrat were to suddenly decide that he or she could take charge of 
this issue.
  The lower Elwha River Dam produces only a modest amount of power, 
about a third of that produced by the upper Elwha River Dam, and a 
minuscule amount in comparison to our productive Snake and Columbia 
River Dams. In addition, Mr. President, the lower Elwha River Dam is in 
bad physical shape.
  So, if Congress acts properly, we can remove the wild card from the 
deck and assure an important level of community protection. As a 
consequence, my support for this lower dam's removal is conditioned on 
legislated protection for Port Angeles' water supply and protection for 
the jobs created by the local mill. No legislation to remove an Elwha 
River Dam will pass the U.S. Senate without these protections, except 
over my strong objections, while I am a Member.
  Mr. President, I must tell you that while I believe the course of 
action I am taking on the issue is the right one, I am disturbed by 
what is forcing me to take this step in such a hasty manner. I am 
driven by the threat of court action, or the possibility that the 
Federal Government might just step in and remove the dams on its own 
with no thought given to the concerns of the local community.
  While I have come to this agonizing decision after years of internal 
and public debate about the fate of these dams, my decision has been 
driven by the unilateral activism this administration has demonstrated 
when it comes to complex environmental issues.
  Based upon the Clinton administration's actions last year in Utah, 
can anyone not justifiably worry that a similar overreaching Federal 
Government authority will take place on the Elwha River? Is there any 
doubt that when this administration is faced with deciding between the 
desires of national environmental organizations and the needs of local 
communities, it always sides with the national environmental groups?
  This is not an easy decision for me--it is made difficult by the 
dozens of meetings I've had with people most affected by this issue. 
I've listened to hundreds of local people who live near the Elwha River 
express their concerns with dam removal and what it means to the local 
community.
  To be fair, I am also impressed by the work of a broad-based 
coalition of residents who have studied the issue and who may have 
originated the proposal to deal with the two dams separately, in a 
staged process. I want to commend the Elwha Citizens' Advisory 
Committee for its work on this issue, and all of the hard work that 
went into developing the committee's report, ``The Elwha River and Our 
Community's Future.''
  I've also listened to the concerns of my constituents in eastern 
Washington, who while not immediately impacted by the removal of the 
Elwha River dams, are watching this debate closely because of their 
concern that something similar could happen on the Columbia or Snake 
Rivers.

[[Page S9305]]

  I want to speak specifically to those people right now, Mr. 
President, and to anyone who might attempt to use my position on this 
issue as a justification for removing other dams in the Pacific 
Northwest, or as asserting that I believe the idea to be worth 
considering.
  Because of the controversial nature of this issue, I think it is 
important that people understand what my position on the Elwha River 
dams does not mean. Some groups and elected officials support removal 
of Elwha River dams as a first step, a practice run, toward removing 
Columbia River system hydroelectric dams. Those who want to make a 
habit of dam removal should understand this proposition: I will never 
support their proposals to remove Snake or Columbia River dams--never.
  Our Northwest forebears built for us the world's most productive 
hydroelectric system. It is our great economic legacy and continues 
today as part of the reason families in the Northwest enjoy the 
Nation's lowest power rates. This clean and renewable resource does not 
pollute.
  These dams also irrigate productive farmland in Idaho, eastern 
Washington, and eastern Oregon. These dams have created an enormous and 
productive aquatic highway that moves our agricultural products to our 
ports. These dams save Portland, Oregon, and hundreds of other 
communities from disastrous flooding.
  Of course, the Columbia River System dams exact an environmental 
price. They hurt our salmon runs. That damage was felt primarily in the 
1930's and 1940's. Since the last Columbia River dam was constructed we 
continued to have large and healthy salmon runs. The last decade's 
alarming decline in Columbia River salmon runs obviously has more 
profound causes than our hydroelectric facilities alone.
  We can do more for salmon especially by acting in a more intelligent 
and coordinated way to restore our Northwest salmon resources. But the 
costs associated with removing dams on the Snake or Columbia Rivers 
will always dwarf the potential benefit to salmon.
  Therefore, Mr. President, I intend this year to work with my 
colleagues to complete acquisition of the two Elwha River dams with 
dollars from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. In addition, I will 
introduce legislation authorizing the removal of the lower Elwha River 
dam. But that bill will also contain three vital conditions I believe 
to be absolutely necessary at the same time:
  First, a 12-year study of the impact of lower dam removal on fish 
populations before any consideration of removing the upper dam;
  Second, a guaranteed hold harmless for the Pot Angeles water supply;
  Third, no dam on the Columbia or Snake Rivers System can be removed, 
breached, or modified in a way that substantially destroys its ability 
to produce power, and provide irrigation, transportation or flood 
control without the prior authorization of Congress.
  I think it is vitally important to America's taxpayers that the first 
condition be met. This is a very costly proposition--the Government 
estimates that it will cost as much as $60 million to remove the lower 
Elwha River dam. My sources tell me that those estimates are way too 
low and that the final cost could be much higher. Of course, no one 
really knows what this project might cost, which is why only the lower 
dam should come down now.
  I want to be sure that when the inevitable day comes when national 
environmental groups and editorial writers push for removal of the 
upper dam, they have a true idea of what it will cost and whether the 
removal of the dam will actually work. The best way to do that is to 
study what happens when the lower dam is removed. We will be able to 
find out exactly what it costs to take out this dam, and, even better, 
we can find out once and for all whether removing a dam will actually 
bring back salmon.
  I believe my second condition is only fair to the people of Port 
Angeles, and is one that should be met with little, or no, opposition.
  As for my third condition, I think it is vital to my constituents in 
eastern Washington, and to my colleagues who represent Montana, Idaho, 
and eastern Oregon, that we in the Congress, and in the administration 
make the important statement that the dams on the Columbia and Snake 
Rivers are not to be touched in the immediate future, unless Congress 
has debated the issue and agrees.
  Radical revisionists in the media, national environmental groups, and 
in the administration are actually talking more and more about tearing 
down 1 of the 11 dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Just last week, 
a prominent Northwest newspaper had a lengthy story about the dam 
removal movement, and how the proposition for tearing down a dam on the 
Columbia River System was gaining momentum. As you can imagine, even 
talking about this subject causes huge concern in the communities that 
depend upon the river for their livelihoods.
  It also causes a profound concern to this Senator, which is why I 
think it is important that we nip such a proposal in the bud, and nip 
it now. This legislation is the most appropriate place to do so.
  With that, Mr. President, I have completed my thoughts on the policy 
of this proposal. Let me now discuss the practicality of getting this 
done in a reasonable amount of time.
  Many of the advocates for Elwha River Dam removal think Congress 
should be able to fund the entire project out of the remaining money in 
the land and water conservation fund. Because I am chairman of the 
Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, these people believe that I can 
simply tell my colleagues that I intend to take $18.5 million of this 
money to complete acquisition, and then grab another $60 million for 
removal of lower dam, leaving the remaining dollars--after the $315 
million for the acquisition of the Headwaters Forest in California and 
the New World Mine in Montana, and the $100 million in State 
acquisition grants--for division among the other 49 States.
  To those back home who believe that it is either fair or possible 
that I should be able to do that with a snap of my fingers, I suggest a 
lack of understanding of how Congress works.
  Today we start in earnest on working through this year's Interior 
appropriations bill. In this bill, I have dealt with Washington State 
projects in a fair and generous fashion. We have been able to fund an 
additional $2 million for the Forest Legacy Program, $8 million for 
land acquisition in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, and 
an additional $3 million for forest health research at the Pacific 
Northwest Research Station.
  Other priority projects which have been funded in the Senate Interior 
appropriations bill and directly benefit Washington State include: An 
increase of $3 million over the President's budget request for trail 
maintenance in the Pacific Northwest; $2.5 million to develop a 
visitors center, interpretive center, and educational center at the 
Vancouver National Historic Reserve; $500,000 in support of Lewis and 
Clark National Historic Trail activities; $2,452,000 to replace the 
Paradise employee dorm at Mount Ranier National Park; $750,000 for 
regional fisheries enhancement; $840,000 for construction of a 
trailhead and information station at the Steigerwald National Wildlife 
Refuge; and $275,000 for the North Cascades National Park to fulfill 
its obligations under various settlement agreements relating to the 
relicensing of hydroelectric projects.
  I feel comfortable with what I have accomplished for my State, and 
proud of that work. I must admit that I would not feel comfortable 
simply demanding from my colleagues that the remaining acquisition 
funds come out of the land and water conservation fund without a strong 
statement of support from the administration and the entire Congress.
  I believe such a statement is needed so that my colleagues from 
around the Nation can understand why their priority items are being 
placed behind spending an additional $18 million to complete the 
acquisition of the Elwha River Dams, and another $60 million to remove 
the lower dam. And Washingtonians may well ask themselves if they are 
willing to give up new projects like those I have already discussed for 
several years in order to put all of our fair share into Elwha River 
Dam removal.
  Second, there is little chance that funds for removal of the lower 
dam will come from the land and water conservation fund. Frankly, I 
would be

[[Page S9306]]

embarrassed to ask for such a sum. Out of fairness to other States 
around the country, I believe the funds for removal of the lower dam 
need to move through other channels, or at least be specifically 
authorized to come out of a land and water conservation fund primarily 
for land acquisition rather than capital improvements.
  Just as the original legislation sponsored by Senator Brock Adams 
needed the authorization of the Energy Committee and the entire 
Congress, the extraordinary level of funding requested for this project 
needs to be authorized by Congress as well. My legislation will propose 
just that. And I hope that this legislation will be considered as 
swiftly as possible.
  I realize that back home I will be criticized for not grabbing all of 
the funding for this project in this year's appropriations process. To 
those critics, I suggest an absence of rational thought and fairness.
  Washington State does quite well under this year's Interior 
appropriations bill. Funding the removal of the lower Elwha River Dam 
would dramatically tip the scales away from fairness, and rightly cause 
justifiable and successful opposition from my colleagues around the 
country who have vital programs in their States that need funding.
  All of us want to get the most for our States, and in our hearts, we 
believe that every request for our State is an urgent priority, but in 
our minds we also know that we can't fund every request. That means we 
must balance our desire to help our States with the reality that 
Congress can only fund so many projects for each State.
  As I said at the beginning of this debate on Friday, Mr. President, I 
had 1,800 requests from the 100 Senators in this body for projects in 
which they had a great interest, the huge majority of which were home-
State projects.
  That is the reality I face as I work to resolve this difficult issue 
involving the Elwha River dams. I know it is a reality that critics 
don't want to hear or acknowledge, but the simple truth is this--full 
funding of acquisition and removal this year is highly unlikely, and 
impossible without setting aside almost all other important Washington 
State projects, and something I am not willing to do.
  Therefore, the best solution is to complete acquisition this year, 
and for that I need the administration to state publicly that this 
remains one of its top priorities. At the same time, I will start the 
process for removing the lower dam by introducing legislation for 
consideration by the Energy Committee, the administration, and the rest 
of Congress.
  Mr. President, I thank you for giving me this time this morning to 
discuss an issue important for my home State. In summary, I guess I 
would finish by saying that on this issue of Northwest dam removal, 
tally me this way: ``once, with conditions.''
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hutchsion). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                    National Endowment for the Arts

  Mr. BAUCUS. Madam President, I rise today to speak on the importance 
of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, otherwise known as 
NEA. This endowment makes a tremendous impact on my State, and it 
worries me greatly that Congress is considering slashing it, or 
otherwise killing it through block grants.
  I think President John Kennedy said it best when he said--and I will 
quote him now:

       When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him 
     of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's 
     concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of 
     his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art 
     establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the 
     touchstone of our judgment.

  The people of my State understand that. Montana boasts a rich 
cultural heritage which can be seen in the work of such notable artists 
as Charlie Russell and Kevin Red Star. Our love of the arts can also be 
seen in the rich crop of literary talent that blankets the State.
  I had a chance to witness that love of the arts firsthand last year 
when I worked with the National Symphony Orchestra on their trip to 
Montana. They broke into many, many groups--I think there were 120 
different ensembles spread across our State--and I was fortunate to be 
able to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra in their encore 
performance in Billings, MT.
  I think it is even more instructive to look at a smaller, more 
constructive event where the NEA makes a real difference every year in 
Montana. Shakespeare in the Park is a group of talented actors who 
travel around the State every summer offering free productions of 
Shakespeare to the public. And every July, for over 20 years now, they 
have come, for example, to Birney, MT. Guess what the population of 
Birney is. Seventeen.
  The troupe of actors sets up their stage just outside of town on 
Poker Jim Butte. They perform two nights, and it is a big deal for the 
people of Birney. They hold their annual Birney Turkey Shoot for 
Spakespeare in order to help subsidize the productions. Every year they 
attract crowds of 100 to 200 people. Not bad for a town with a 
population of 17. The audience usually consists of farmers, ranchers, 
and native Americans. They are people who, without this event, might 
have to travel over 100 miles to see a Shakespearean play. This year's 
productions were Shakespeare's ``Love's Labor Lost'' and Moliere's 
``Learned Ladies''--two classic works that everyone should have a 
chance to see.
  The Shakespeare in the Park program relies on the NEA grant they 
receive every year, and without it they would have to limit where they 
can go. That means that Birney might not get to see its yearly 
productions on Poker Jim Butte.
  I think the responses to the Shakespeare in the Park productions 
speak for themselves. One parent, for example, said:

       I want to thank you so much for coming to Richey. We are a 
     small community with a total enrollment, grade and high 
     school, of 91. It was great to introduce our children, 
     especially the high schoolers, to Shakespeare and acting. It 
     is rare for them, and us, to attend something other than a 
     sports event.

  Or listen to what another student had to say:

       I have never had an interest in Shakespeare until I saw 
     your program.

  Madam President, I think this last quote is particularly insightful, 
particularly in this day and age when many people are afraid that the 
value of our great works has been diminished. Funding the NEA shows our 
commitment to the classics like Shakespeare, and it helps make sure 
that our kids can learn firsthand about these valuable works.
  There are some in this body, however, who believe that Federal 
funding for the arts should end. These people believe that Federal 
funds can be replaced by contributions from private citizens and 
corporations. While this might be true in populated areas like New York 
and California, States like mine would have no way of making up the 
loss. I make that very clear. It just is not possible.
  Quite simply, without the NEA, there are no arts in places like 
Birney, MT, or countless other communities across the country.
  There are some who argue that we cannot afford to fund arts programs 
while we are cutting the budget. But when one looks at the total amount 
of money we spend in our budget, the figures for the NEA are rather 
small. The $99 million the NEA received last year was merely a small 
fraction of the total budget. That comes to less than 40 cents per 
person. But when one looks at all the great returns from our investment 
in the NEA, I believe it is money very well spent.
  Finally, there are others who say the NEA should be defunded, 
eliminated, because it funds obscenity. I believe those are valid 
concerns, and I have to admit there have been a few poor choices in the 
past. But I believe that those problems have been addressed, and it 
would be a shame to focus on a few mistakes when there are so many 
good, worthwhile projects that the NEA has made a reality.
  A complete list of Montana projects, museums, and artists who benefit 
from the NEA grants would be too long to

[[Page S9307]]

give, but the following is a small example of the recipients:
  Eight symphony orchestras in cities like Billings, Bozeman, Butte, 
and Missoula; over 20 nonprofit art museums and galleries such as the 
Liberty Village Art Center in Chester, the Jailhouse Gallery in Hardin, 
and the Hockaday Center for the Arts in Kalispell; and nearly 20 
performing arts groups like Shakespeare in the Park and the Vigilante 
Players who tour to communities all across Montana.
  In addition, the NEA funds go to organizations which make an effort 
to reach out to children, to educate them on the importance of arts in 
our society.
  Without a doubt, NEA funding has made a real, positive difference in 
Montana. That is why I believe we should continue funding this 
worthwhile program.
  My basic philosophy toward the budget is this. We must have a budget 
that reflects our values. To have no funding for the arts truly takes 
away some of our humanity, some of what makes our Nation great. Those 
are not the values I want my budget to reflect. That is why I urge my 
colleagues to support full funding, with no block grants, for the 
National Endowment for the Arts.
  Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THOMAS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. THOMAS. I also ask unanimous consent I might proceed as in 
morning business for 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.
  Mr. THOMAS. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. Thomas pertaining to the introduction of S. 1176 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. THOMAS. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Inhofe). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and 
ask that it be filed.
  I just ask the distinguished manager of this bill if I could work 
with him to have it brought up at the appropriate time.
  Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I commend the Senator from Texas in 
proceeding in this fashion. As I announced previously, there are a 
number of amendments we expect with respect to the National Endowment 
for the Arts. I believe that the proposal by the Senator from Texas 
will be a perfecting amendment, that she is attempting to improve it.
  The logic in dealing with these amendments will be to deal with those 
amendments that strike or substantially cut funding for the endowment 
first. And so the willingness of the Senator from Texas to speak, as I 
am sure she will quite eloquently, to her proposition but not to 
introduce it yet will facilitate dealing with the matter when it comes 
to a vote in a more logical way.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I will leave it to the discretion of the manager what 
is the right order because of course there will be a number of 
amendments dealing with the NEA.
  My particular amendment takes the dollar amount that is in the bill 
and reallocates it and established a way to spend it. There will be 
amendments offered that will do other things. And I think it is really 
a healthy thing that we are going to be debating the NEA and what kind 
of funding the NEA has and how it is allocated, because I think a 
number of people in our country have concerns about some of the types 
of grants that the NEA has approved.
  There have been inappropriate uses of NEA funding. The National 
Endowment for the Arts I think is a program that everyone hoped would 
establish as a priority a commitment to the arts in this country. I 
believe that is a proper commitment for our country to encourage arts 
in our country, to make arts accessible to all the people of our 
country, to educate our children in the importance of the arts.
  All of these things are worthy goals. But because we have seen the 
funding of obscenity, of pornography, of things that you could not even 
in your most modest attempts to describe as art, many people have 
opposed the NEA. And many people have said, ``We don't need it. Why 
would we want the Government involved in this?'' I certainly have great 
respect for that view.
  I do believe that there should be a commitment in this country to the 
arts. I speak as a person who grew up in a town of 15,000. My parents 
were very careful to try to make sure that I had access to the arts. 
They gave me ballet lessons for 13 years. You would have thought it 
would have taken. But after 13 years, I decided that maybe there was 
something else in my life that would be more successful than ballet.
  They also made sure that I went to the nearest big city, when 
possible, to go to the symphony. They drove me to Houston, sometimes to 
Galveston, to see plays or to go to an art museum.
  But, you know, many children in America are not as fortunate as I was 
because perhaps they do not have parents who thought this was important 
or that this would make their education more complete. Some children do 
not have that opportunity.
  I want all children in America to have this opportunity, whether they 
come from families that do not have time to appreciate the arts because 
they are working so hard to make ends meet; or whether they come from a 
rural community that does not have easy access to a major city or 
regional arts center. I want to try to give that same opportunity that 
I think was important in my life to every child in America.
  I would like to see school districts adopt arts appreciation programs 
because it is proven in the testing of our children in school that 
where children do have access to the arts, where they have arts 
appreciation or arts classes in their school curricula, they also do 
better in math and science and reading. That is a proven fact.

  So we are not talking about something that is just extra that would 
be nice if we could afford it. We are talking about giving children a 
more well-rounded education and giving children the chance, by having 
the full range of education, to do better in the basic subjects.
  So that is why I believe it is important for our country to have a 
commitment to arts education and to provide access to the arts for all 
the children so that some of them can grow up to be artists or to 
appreciate the arts and pass that involvement or appreciation on to 
future generations. I cannot imagine a country that is as developed, as 
technologically advanced as ours, that does not also have an 
appreciation for and a commitment to the arts.
  That is why I am putting forward an amendment to this bill that would 
keep the allocation for 1998 exactly where the committee has it, 
$100,060,000 to be exact. But under my amendment, I would rearrange the 
priorities.
  Instead of having the NEA make all of the grants with this money, I 
think it is time that we allocate to the States, in block grants, the 
bulk of the money. I think it is time that we have a more just and 
equitable distribution of arts funding.
  For one thing, I think giving the money in block grants to the 
States--and I will talk about the very few restrictions we would put on 
this--gives the States the ability to fashion programs that will best 
meet the needs and priorities of their States. They can divide this 
money among, for example, arts access or education in the schools, 
transportation from rural areas to regional arts centers, or insurance 
programs for art museums to be able to sponsor national exhibitions 
that would otherwise not be seen by the citizens of that region outside 
of New York or Washington, DC, or California or Texas. I think it is 
important that states have that flexibility.

[[Page S9308]]

  Also, under my amendment States would have the flexibility to invest 
up to 25 percent of their Federal funding in an endowment. I think that 
is important because I would like to see more States have permanent 
endowments for funding of arts and access to the arts within the State.
  So here is what my amendment does.
  First, it limits the administrative costs of the NEA. Instead of 
allowing the 17 percent of the funding that the NEA now uses for 
administrative costs, my amendment would set a cap of 5 percent, 
reducing the money spent on administration to $5 million down from 
approximately $17 million. I think 5 percent should be enough for the 
allocation that the NEA would be able to grant to national art works.
  The NEA grants to national groups or institutions would be 20 
percent. The NEA would be allowed 5 percent for administrative costs to 
administer 20 percent of the total for grants to national groups or 
institutions.
  My amendment would not allow grants to individuals, but only to 
institutions or groups. NEA would absolutely be prohibited from 
granting any obscene works. NEA could also not grant seasonal grants 
such as, for example, giving the Metropolitan Opera $1 million for its 
season, whatever works might be performed during that season. Grants 
would be for a specific project that the Metropolitan Opera would have 
to specify, so that the NEA would be able to know exactly what it was 
funding.
  My amendment would also prohibit grantees from giving subgrants to 
other groups.
  In other words, 20 percent, or $20 million, would be available for 
national grants to groups or institutions. Such groups would be opera 
companies, symphonies, art museums, ballets, or other groups or 
institutions that clearly serve a national purpose or exhibit a 
national stature.
  These national grants would require matching grants. If the grantee--
an art museum, for example--had a total budget of $3 million or less, 
it could cover up to one-third of the art project with Federal grant 
money. This way, two-thirds of the cost of the project would have to 
come from the local community or State.

  If the grantee--for example, an art museum--has an annual budget of 
over $3 million, the maximum Federal funds the grantee could use for 
the project would be one-fifth of the total cost of the project. So for 
large institutions, the maximum contribution of Federal dollars would 
be 20 percent and the other 80 percent would have to come from local or 
State matching funds. These matching requirements would apply to the 
$20 million allocated national grants.
  However, under my amendment the bulk of the Federal funds would go to 
the States in block grants, namely 75 percent or $75 million. That will 
guarantee level funding from fiscal year 1997 for every State and 
territory of the United States, up to 6.6 percent of the total funds 
available to the States for fiscal year 1998. The only two states that 
would not be guaranteed level funding from fiscal year 1997 would be 
New York and California. However, those States would be expected to 
seek a large portion of the $20 million in national grants. So under my 
proposal 75 percent of the Federal funds would go to the States in 
block grants, and almost every State in this country will get more of 
the arts funding under this allocation.
  Behind me on the charts you will see the differences in the funding 
for each State. Most States will have a significant amount of funding 
beyond fiscal year 1997. I think it is time that States have more 
opportunity to support their school systems or their regional arts 
centers and provide more access to the arts by more people in this 
country.
  States may use up to 25 percent of their funds to establish or 
enhance a permanent arts endowment. I think it is a worthy goal to give 
States this incentive. Under my amendment, States may contribute any 
amount of money in addition to the 25 percent, but they must match 
whatever portion they use for an endowment by at least 1 to 1. In other 
words, if the State of Oklahoma decides to have an endowment for the 
arts, it can take up to 25 percent of its Federal allocation but it 
must match that amount, dollar for dollar, with funds from other State, 
local, or private funds.
  Of course, my hope is that eventually every State will have a 
permanent arts endowment so that they will be able always to ensure 
access to art that is available within their own communities and within 
their own States. But permanent endowments will also in the long run 
assure the States will be able to attract from the outside some of the 
national touring art shows, such as the wonderful Monet exhibition that 
traveled to the Fort Worth Kimball Art Museum. Many people in my part 
of the country would not have been able to see that exhibition had it 
not traveled to Fort Worth, TX. This is the case all over the country.
  Right now the NEA serves a valuable role in supporting an insurance 
indemnity program that has allowed international blockbuster shows, 
such as the Jewels of the Romanovs, to travel around the country. 
People all over America, because of this insurance program, will have 
access to see the jewels from the Romanov dynasty in Russia that I hear 
are really incredible. Thanks to NEA funds, Americans have also had the 
opportunity to see the presentation of Tennessee Williams' ``The Glass 
Menagerie.'' Shakespeare's ``As You Like It'' went to 45 communities in 
26 States because the NEA helped them with the cost of touring. Those 
productions traveled to Cincinnati, OH; Keene, NH; and Orange, TX.
  I think Senator Baucus earlier today talked about the Shakespeare 
plays viewed in Montana would not have traveled to Montana but for the 
help from the NEA. I think it is exciting when Senator Baucus says that 
someone in Montana said he had never even thought of reading 
Shakespeare until he was able to attend his first Shakespeare outdoor 
play and began to love Shakespeare and studying Shakespeare seriously. 
These are the kind of things that I think having a small national 
funding priority will continue to do for this country.
  In Abilene, TX, the NEA has been helpful in starting the Abilene 
opera. There are so many people in west Texas who had never seen the 
opera and, in fact, thought the opera was a stuffy event that nobody 
would really enjoy but would just attend for social purposes. When they 
went to their first opera, the first opera they have ever had in 
Abilene, they came back just thinking, ``what a joy, what a treasure.'' 
These people are now going to encourage people to contribute locally so 
that they can enjoy more opera productions. NEA funds were the seed 
corn that gave access to people who had never even seen an opera who 
now not only have seen one, but loved it and are contributing to 
bringing that experience to other people, especially children, in the 
west Texas area.

  Regional touring by the best American dance companies to rural towns 
and small cities has been helped by the NEA. The production of 
performance specials and art documentaries by the Education 
Broadcasting Corp., WNET, in New York are now viewed by millions of 
Americans because that seed corn was planted by the NEA.
  So that is why I am not among those who want to just do away with the 
NEA, because I believe that Americans overall will be more culturally 
aware and enjoy culture more, if they have the opportunity and exposure 
to the arts, which is ensured by our having a national commitment to 
the arts. I don't want to do away with that. Do we need to change the 
NEA? Yes. Do we need to impose strict prohibitions against obscenity 
and pornography? Absolutely, because it has been shown that because 
there have not been enough limits on the NEA, truly inappropriate use 
of our tax dollars has occurred. But I don't think that means we walk 
away from this commitment. I think it means that we change NEA, that we 
get control of it, that we make sure that the money is being used for 
what we intended it to be used for. But we don't walk away from it.
  Let me give another example: Del Rio, TX, is on the border of Mexico. 
The average per capita income of Del Rio is about one-half of the 
national per-capita income. The population of Del Rio is 80 percent 
Hispanic. Yet, despite the economic difficulties that Del Rio faces, 
the people have a long history of commitment to the arts. In 1992, they 
converted their old firehouse into an arts center. The new arts center 
now holds free exhibitions of work

[[Page S9309]]

of national, regional, and local artists. It conducts art instruction 
classes. It offers free children's classes in the summer and supports a 
children's dance troupe that performs at civic and cultural events. All 
of this is helped by seed money from the NEA.
  Mr. President, I think we have an opportunity here to get control of 
a funding program that has been abused in the past. But it has not been 
abused 100 percent. It has been abused but it has also done so much 
good for places like Del Rio, TX, like Beaumont, TX, like Cincinnati, 
OH, like Keene, NH. There are so many wonderful stories of young people 
getting their first access to the arts and their first appreciation for 
the arts because the NEA gave some grant money, some seed corn, to a 
local community, which was matched by that local community. Something 
was made possible because of the national commitment to the arts that 
has spurred many young people to go into arts as a profession. Artists 
or dancers or musicians who now belong to a symphony--all of these 
contributors to the arts in America began their careers from seed corn 
that came from a national commitment to the arts.
  Now, I do understand how people have become very frustrated. But 
let's do something positive and productive with this frustration. Let's 
make something very good out of a modest commitment to national arts. 
Let's give our young children a chance either to excel in the arts or 
by an appreciation of the arts to make them more well rounded, to allow 
them to be literate in whatever circles they may walk. Let's allow them 
to have the same access that their European counterparts have. Many 
times I have been told that our young people do not have the cultural 
awareness that many of their age group in European countries have. I 
think they should. I think they should also appreciate the contribution 
of Americans to the great art of the world. The more young people to 
whom we can offer arts access and appreciation, the more of a 
contribution America will make to the world art community.

  I think we have something that is worth keeping, and I think it is 
our responsibility to support it in a responsible way. That is why 
under my amendment I preserve the allocation of dollars but 
redistribute those dollars to allow the States to use arts funds in the 
way that will best give access to all people in their State. I oppose 
throwing out the national commitment to the arts, because we have proof 
that it helps our young people in all of their educational endeavors to 
have an appreciation and an awareness of the arts. We also know that 
art adds to the quality of life in our country.
  If we are the greatest, freest, fairest nation on the Earth, which I 
believe we are, I think a commitment to the arts is part of keeping the 
well-rounded, cultural, thorough education of our young people at the 
premier level that we also value for the preservation of our freedom 
and democracy that are beacons to the world.
  Mr. President, I am proud to sponsor an amendment. I will look 
forward to working with the manager of this bill to introduce it at the 
most appropriate time. I think this is an important debate that we 
should be having. I hope in the end when all is said and done that the 
bill we send to the President will say we have a national commitment to 
the arts in this country. We want to make sure it is done in the way 
that will give the most access to the arts to the most people of our 
country and that will give Americans an appreciation for what America 
contributes to the world art community.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I do not think it would be possible for a 
Member of this body to defend more eloquently the mission of the 
National Endowment for the Arts or the place that the arts in the 
broadest sense of that term play in our society than we have just heard 
from the Senator from Texas.
  From the beginning of the debate over this issue she has taken a 
consistently supportive position but not a position that simply 
supports the status quo blindly. She helped draft the conditions a year 
or 2 or 3 years ago that prohibited the National Endowment for the Arts 
from making a broad range of individual grants that were the source of 
most of what the vast majority of the American people regarded as 
outrageous misuses of the taxpayers' money. And here today, she does 
not defend the status quo--though, essentially, the status quo is what 
is proposed by this bill in its present form--but is attempting to 
strengthen the Endowment by decentralizing the granting process to a 
significant degree, and by spreading it in a way that she feels is more 
equitable across all of the States and jurisdictions of the United 
States.

  So this is one of the amendments that is a friendly amendment, one 
can say, and it was for that reason that I asked her to defer formally 
introducing it until we could hear from the opponents of the Endowment 
itself and deal with the several amendments on this subject in logical 
fashion.
  As the Senator from Texas knows, the committee bill that is on the 
floor at the present time simply makes a very modest--probably less 
than inflation--increase in the Endowment, maintains essentially the 
same conditions that have been imposed on it over the last 2 or 3 
years, but does not attempt to change the structure of the way in which 
those grants are made. I think that the proposal of the Senator from 
Texas is likely to be considered very carefully and thoughtfully by her 
colleagues here on the floor and, if not here on the floor, perhaps in 
a conference committee where, as all Senators are quite well aware, we 
will be faced with a House position that is essentially to abolish the 
National Endowment, and which will almost certainly require us to make 
some changes in the proposal that is here before the Senate in order to 
assure an acceptable compromise.
  So, without at this point taking a position on the specific amendment 
proposed by the Senator, I do want to say that I am convinced that it 
is a constructive contribution to a very important debate.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator for those 
remarks. I think that he, too, is approaching this in a positive way. 
Like the Senator from Washington, who is chairing this very important 
subcommittee, I don't have ideas that I consider to be in concrete and 
I am not unwilling to change allocations or hear other views. But I 
think if you are going to make constructive change, you have to start 
with an outline. I think that is what the Senator from Washington has 
done. While he has brought the bill to the floor, essentially not 
changing the status quo, he has always been open to suggestions on ways 
to make it better. I think, in the end, in conference, if the Senate 
will speak in what I hope is a decisive way on the approach that it 
wants to take, then I would like to see us work with the House to do 
something that will be constructive that will preserve our national 
commitment to the arts. But I would hope that whatever we do, we make 
the American people feel comfortable and give them something they think 
is worth their hard earned tax dollars, something that will give their 
children better access to the arts and enhance their education, if you 
will, something that the American people would write if they were 
standing here on the floor.
  I am speaking from my roots. I am speaking as a person who has 
benefited greatly from growing up in a town of 15,000, with the strong 
values that this small town gave me, but with wonderful parents for 
whom I can never fully express my appreciation. They knew that while I 
learned the values represented in that small town, there were other 
important things for my education, such as appreciation for the arts, 
for which they would have to make an extra effort to give me. They did 
make that extra effort. But, Mr. President, not everyone has parents 
like I had.
  What I want when we finish this bill is for us to have made up for 
the fact that every parent is not as responsible as mine were and does 
not give every child the same access that I had, the same opportunities 
that I had. I want to see that we in the Congress kept our commitment 
to funding of the arts for our children all over America, from whatever 
part of the country. If we can take that responsible action, then every 
girl who grows up in a town of 15,000 with no arts of its own will have

[[Page S9310]]

the same access that I was fortunate enough to have, and I think we 
will be a better country and make a stronger contribution to the arts 
of the world if we keep this commitment. Thank you, Mr. President.

  I yield the floor.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas is recognized.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. I have an amendment that I would like to file. I will 
not offer it at this time, but I would like to file it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amendment will be received.
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. We have heard many arguments over the years that the 
National Endowment for the Arts [NEA] is not living up to its original 
intent of ``broadening public access to the arts.'' In fact, in NEA's 
original mandate and mission statement, they are charged with the 
responsibility of broadening public access to the arts. That is the key 
question: Have they really fulfilled that? We have heard a lot of 
debate through the years as to whether the NEA has really fulfilled 
that mandate.
  In fact, one-third of the Federal share currently goes to six of the 
largest cities in the country. The agency, in addition to sending most 
of those direct grants to six large cities, has also demonstrated 
soaring administrative costs. Nearly 20 percent of every dollar that 
the National Endowment for the Arts expends is spent in overhead here 
in Washington, DC--much more than most of the Federal agencies--even 
more, for instance, than the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH). 
NEH's overhead costs are much, much less than that 19 to 20 percent 
figure.
  Furthermore, the NEA continues to fund what many Americans believe is 
objectionable art. While we have heard a lot of debate on those 
issues--the administrative costs, the formula, whether or not it is 
fulfilling its mandate--very few actual solutions have been offered.
  So, this afternoon, I want to present what I think is a common-sense 
solution to the problems that we have seen in the National Endowment 
for the Arts. I ask the question: What happens to the novice artist, or 
the songwriter in middle America, when the NEA funnels one-third of its 
direct grant funds to only six cities? Those cities are New York, 
Boston, MA, Los Angeles, CA, Chicago, IL, San Francisco, CA, and the 
District of Columbia. Each one of these six cities already has well-
established arts communities. Yet, the NEA continues to pour a huge 
amount of its limited resources--over one-third of its direct grants--
to those six cities.
  So what happens to that new artist, that songwriter just starting out 
in Arkansas, or in the State of Oklahoma, or in Iowa, or the startup 
band in Small Town, U.S.A., who doesn't have their dreams realized, 
when one-fifth of direct grants are sent to multimillion dollar arts 
organizations who already benefit from over $11 billion in private 
giving each year? In fact, the private giving to the arts, combined 
with what is spent and purchased on tickets, is almost equal to that 
which is spent on professional sports in this country.
  And most tragic of all, I believe, is: What about the children? As my 
colleague, Senator Hutchison from Texas, spoke so eloquently on, the 
children in rural towns across this Nation who only dream of ever 
seeing the lavish theaters in New York City--what happens to them when 
they are denied the opportunity to perform a school play because 
bureaucrats in Washington awarded $400,000 to the Whitney Museum for 
one single exhibit rather than their school play?
  Mr. President, how can we justify this kind of very, very selective 
spending? For instance, in the State of Arkansas, the average per-
person expenditure from the National Endowment for the Arts amounted 
to, if you divided it up for every man, woman, and child in the State, 
17 cents per person. The State of Arkansas has a per capita income of 
about $18,000. My home State received, out of the $99.5 million 
appropriated for fiscal year 1997, approximately 17 cents per person. 
And then we turn around and look at the State of Massachusetts, which 
has a per capita income of $30,000--not quite, but almost twice the 
income in the State of Arkansas--and the National Endowment for the 
Arts has decided in its infinite wisdom to spend 60 cents per person in 
the State of Massachusetts.

  That is what I regard as very selective spending. In the State of 
Mississippi, with a per capita income of about $18,000 per person, they 
received about 25 cents per person from the NEA last year, while the 
State of New York, which has a per capita income of $29,000 per person, 
received $1 per person from the National Endowment for the Arts. After 
looking more closely at the per capita numbers, the NEA used very 
selective funding. The Midwestern State of Iowa, with a per capita 
income of $22,000, received 20 cents per person, while the State of 
Maryland, with a higher per capita income of $27,000, received more 
than twice the per capita expenditure than the State of Iowa--Maryland 
received 45 cents per person. That is very, very selective spending on 
the part of the National Endowment for the Arts. How can we justify 
that?
  Then when you break it down by political party, it becomes even more 
intriguing. Last year, NEA funding totaling close to $45 million was 
sent to congressional districts represented by Democrats in Congress, 
while about $14 million was sent to congressional districts represented 
by Republicans across the country. If you break that down by the number 
of direct grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, you find 
that almost 1,300 direct grants went to congressional districts 
represented by Democrats, while only 408 went to congressional 
districts represented by Republicans.
  When the funding is broken down per district, on average, about 
$223,000 was sent to districts represented by Democrats, and on 
average, about $60,000--almost one-fourth--went to congressional 
districts represented by Republicans. And you can go on and on.
  The fact is that $3 out of every $4 going to the States is going to 
congressional districts represented by Democrats. That is very 
selective funding. As one observer in Arkansas said, ``Why not send the 
$100 million to the Democratic National Committee and cut out the 
middle man?'' It has become a very selective funding formula used by 
the National Endowment for the Arts.
  Well, I cannot and will not justify what I think is inequitable and 
out-of-control spending by an elitist agency rife with problems and 
abuses.
  So, Mr. President, it is time to bring this funding into line and it 
is time for a solution. So I rise today, along with several of my 
colleagues, to offer a solution. I see Senator Sessions here on the 
floor. I hope he will speak as a cosponsor of this amendment. I offer a 
solution that gets the money down to the artists, the songwriters, that 
startup band, that local writer, the painter on the local level and, 
most importantly, down to our children--a solution that fulfills the 
NEA's original mandate and mission statement of ``broadening public 
access to the arts.''
  When you look at what is spent in Mississippi as compared to what is 
spent in New York, or in Massachusetts as compared to what is spent in 
Iowa, I think there is no one who can, with a straight face, defend the 
National Endowment for the Arts and say they are fulfilling their 
mission statement of broadening public access to the arts.
  So the amendment I am offering today supports my belief that there 
are potential artists everywhere and in every corner of every State. 
From the plains of Wyoming to the mountains in West Virginia, from the 
Mississippi Delta to the potato fields of Iowa, we have budding 
artists, potential artists, everywhere.
  Contrary to Jane Alexander's notion that ``the areas of nurturing and 
development of artists tend to be located in a few States . . . ''--by 
the way, Jane Alexander made that statement in our April hearing before 
the Labor and Human Resources Committee.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that her statement made before 
the Labor and Human Resources Committee be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the excerpt was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       Ms. Alexander. Let me suggest an analogy here with regard 
     to the arts. You are correct that Arkansas received very 
     little in the way of awards and dollars this year. Again, 
     they would have received more, of course, had we had the 
     budget that we had before. However, an analogy that might be 
     appropriate is that there are apples grown in practically 
     every State of the United States,

[[Page S9311]]

     but there are few States that have the right conditions for 
     nurturing and developing apple trees; and then, they are 
     distributed all throughout the Nation.
       The same is true of the arts. The talent pools, the areas 
     of nurturing and developing of artists tend to be located in 
     a few States--but there are artists everywhere.

  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Ms. Alexander said, ``* * * the areas of nurturing 
and development of artists tend to be located in a few States * * *'' I 
take great exception to that. In fact, I take great offense to that 
statement. I believe artists are everywhere--in every city, town, and 
county across this Nation, in every home, in every schoolyard, in every 
playground in America. It is time that talent is recognized and 
realized. It is time that the elitist attitude that says that the pools 
of artistic talent in this country are restricted to a few small States 
is rejected once and for all. In fact, my home State of Arkansas is the 
home State to many famous artists; John Grisham, author; William 
McNamara, painter; Billy Bob Thornton, Academy Award winner for his 
role in ``Slingblade''; Mary Steenburgen, actress; Vance Randolph, 
famous folklorist; and Maya Angelou, famous poet. On and on the list 
goes.
  So the pool of talent in this country is not restricted to a few 
States where we should put our limited resources from the National 
Endowment.
  Simply put, my proposal would cut out the Washington middleman and 
send the arts dollars down to the States so that those who are closest 
to the unknown writer, the start-up band, or the schoolchild, can make 
the decisions as to where those wise investments will be made to those 
individuals who might otherwise have been passed over for the well-
endowed Whitney Museum or the Boston Symphony, which has a $43 million 
annual income, or the Art Institute of Chicago, which has a $96 million 
annual income, or the Metropolitan Opera, which has $133 million in 
total annual income. In giving grants to those great, but well-endowed 
institutions, we rob from those who need it most and who would best 
fulfill the mandate that the National Endowment espouses.
  Additionally, by getting the decisionmaking out of Washington, the 
nearly 20 percent in administrative overhead the agency currently 
maintains is virtually abolished. That 20 percent currently being spent 
on administrative overhead in Washington would be awarded back to the 
States. It is the artists all across America who win under this 
proposal, who stand to be recognized by their home State rather than by 
a bloated bureaucracy in Washington.
  In fact, as we will demonstrate on this chart--and I hope that all of 
my colleagues in the Senate will take a look--we will have a handout 
for them--45 out of 50 States will gain under this block grant 
proposal. Cut out the 20-percent administrative overhead, limit 
administrative costs to 1 percent, write the checks to the Governors, 
send it to the States' art councils or to the State legislatures, and 
in so doing we will have more resources to send directly to those who 
will benefit most from them.
  In fact, all but a few States--45 out of 50--will increase arts 
dollars compared to last year. Most notably, for Senators Mack and 
Graham from the State of Florida--Florida will receive almost $3.4 
million more than last year, while the artists in Texas, Senator 
Hutchison's State, will benefit from close to $3 million more than in 
fiscal year 1997. How do we do that? We take that 20 percent bloated 
administrative cost in Washington, eliminate the National Endowment, 
let the Secretary of the Treasury write a check to the Governors to go 
through the legislature or the State arts councils, limit State 
administrative spending to 15 percent, impose strict auditing 
requirements, award a $500,000 basic grant to each State, and then 
expend the remainder of those dollars under a per capita formula--45 
out of 50 States will be winners. Florida, $3.4 million; Texas, $3 
million. This commonsense solution seeks to give the dollars directly 
to the States in an equitable fashion, particularly to many underserved 
areas, and, most importantly, permits more local control of this money.
  Moreover, this proposal includes clear and precise language requiring 
States to conduct strict audits on the Federal dollars they receive, as 
well as submit a report for public inspection within that State. Let 
the public know how the money is being spent. Let the public have the 
reassurance that audits are being performed and that strict accounting 
measures are being followed. Any State found to have misused their 
Federal funds under the guidelines set forth in this amendment will be 
required to repay the money, plus a 10-percent penalty, to the 
Treasury.
  Mr. President, in my efforts to find a solution to the current 
inequities that exist in the distribution of arts dollars, I solicited 
feedback on this proposal from a number of individuals, including our 
current Governor of the State of Arkansas, Gov. Mike Huckabee. We had 
staff talk with his staff. I personally talked with Governor Huckabee, 
and was encouraged by his enthusiastic response to this block grant 
approach. I asked him point blank, ``Would Arkansas benefit from having 
more control over arts dollars for the budding artists, musicians, 
writers, and actors in Arkansas?''
  I am very pleased to report that he gave a resounding thumbs-up to 
this proposal. He believes very much that this proposal will benefit 
the State of Arkansas. I quote from Gov. Huckabee's letter. Mr. 
President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the 
entire letter from Governor Mike Huckabee from the State of Arkansas.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                State of Arkansas,


                                       Office of the Governor,

                              Little Rock, AR, September 11, 1997.
     Hon. Tim Hutchinson,
     U.S. Senator,
     Little Rock, AR
       Dear Tim, I am in full support of the proposed amendment 
     regarding the manner in which grant funds from the National 
     Endowment of the Arts will be distributed to the states. I 
     believe states have a better understanding of their needs and 
     a much closer relationship with our constituents at the state 
     level than a bureaucracy in Washington.
       As you are aware, the citizens of Arkansas have recently 
     voted for an increased tax upon themselves, part of which is 
     going to the Department of Heritage, the state agency that is 
     responsible for distributing funds for development of the 
     arts in Arkansas.
       As a state, we have a need for the continued support of 
     developing art talents, as well as making the Arts available 
     to the public. I appreciate your leadership on this, and I am 
     in full support. If I can assist this effort in any way, 
     please let me know.
           Sincerely yours,
                                                    Mike Huckabee.

  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, Governor Huckabee wrote, ``As a State, 
we have a need for the continued support of developing art talents, as 
well as making the arts available to the public.'' Then Governor 
Huckabee went on to state that he ``believes States have a better 
understanding of their needs and a much closer relationship with our 
constituents at the State level than a bureaucracy in Washington.''
  I think what Governor Huckabee said would be echoed by Governors--
both Democrat and Republican--all across this country; that, if they 
could receive those funds directly, have control over them, be able to 
make the decisions as to where those grants should go, we will have a 
more productive arts community in each one of our States.
  Mr. President, it becomes increasingly harder to justify the 
existence of the National Endowment for the Arts' Washington 
bureaucracy when one takes a more careful look at the overhead and the 
salary costs of this agency.
  For example, from 1994 to 1996, the administrative costs of the 
National Endowment for the Arts went from a little over 14 percent in 
1994, 14.4 percent, to almost 19 percent in 1996, at a time when the 
agency was cut by 39 percent, and was faced with a loss of 89 
positions. The administrative costs amount to almost 20 cents on the 
dollar. At a time when the NEA was cutting budgets and the number of 
positions at the agency, administrative costs as a percentage of their 
budget went up to nearly 20 cents on every dollar of our constituents' 
hard-earned paychecks.
  My constituents in Arkansas wonder why it costs almost $19 million to 
distribute just over $50 million in NEA direct grant funds. They wonder 
for good reason--$19 million to distribute $50 million. These are their 
hard-earned

[[Page S9312]]

tax dollars on the line. I don't doubt that many of my colleagues' 
constituents have exactly the same questions.
  A closer analysis of how the NEA spends its administrative budget 
raises even further questions about the efficiency and effectiveness of 
the agency. While the agency repeatedly complains of the draconian 
effects of the budget cuts on its staff, over 68 percent of the 154 
individuals currently employed by the NEA earn over $50,000 per year. 
Let me repeat that. The agency complains about the burden that they are 
facing under the budget cuts that have been imposed over the last 
couple of years, but at the same time over 68 percent of their staff 
out of 154 individuals employed by the NEA, are earning over $50,000 
per year. That is the equivalent of an average constituent in Arkansas 
earning three yearly salaries in just 1 year.
  To make matters worse, the NEA's own inspector general uncovered 
significant problems, deficiencies, and abuses during its audit of 
grantees from 1991 to 1996. This chart demonstrates some of the 
inspector general's findings--not a Republican committee nor a 
Republican chairman--but the NEA's own inspector general found this:
  Sixty-three percent of the grantees had project costs that were not 
reconcilable to their accounting records. That is well over half. 
Sixty-three percent of the grantees could not reconcile their 
accounting records.
  Seventy-nine percent, over three-fourths, had inadequate 
documentation of personnel costs charged to the grant. That is money 
going to individuals. That is personnel salaries that are 
unaccountable, according to the NEA's own inspector general.
  Fifty-three percent had failed to engage independent auditors to 
conduct grant audits as is required by OMB guidelines. The Office of 
Management and Budget requires that these audits be conducted, and over 
half did not do so.
  I am curious. Those who are advocates of the National Endowment, 
those who are advocates of maintaining the status quo--and I heard them 
speak on the floor of the Senate today--they speak eloquently on behalf 
of art; they speak eloquently on behalf of culture. But I have not 
heard any of them respond to these findings conducted by the inspector 
general that find blatant misuse of taxpayers' funds. Fifty-three 
percent--over half--not even complying with the Office of Management 
and Budget's requirement for independent audits.

  These numbers are alarming. They are intolerable. They compel us to 
change the status quo. The best way we can change it is to rid the 
country of the National Endowment and send the money down to the States 
where it can truly go to benefit arts on the local level and fulfill 
the original intent and mandate of the NEA. As if this scenario is not 
gruesome enough, how is it justifiable that the NEA assisted in 
promoting the President's William D. Ford Federal Direct Student Loan 
Program? That is correct--the NEA, under an interagency agreement with 
the Department of Education, provided design assistance for marketing 
materials promoting the President's Direct Student Loan Program. This 
is the National Endowment for the Arts. This is the agency originally 
established to broaden access to the arts in this country. This was the 
agency established so that underserved areas like Virginia, Arkansas, 
Oklahoma, and Alabama with start-up artists who want the opportunity to 
build a future in the arts community, would receive funding for these 
purposes. Instead, we find a grant going for surely a strictly 
political and not arts-oriented program--the promotion of the 
President's Direct Student Loan Program. You can take any position you 
want on the President's Direct Student Loan Program, whether that is 
the right way to go or not, but to use NEA funds to promote it--that is 
indefensible.
  Although the NEA claims that the Department of Education reimbursed 
the agency $100,000 under this agreement, the NEA reports that they 
have no accounting of the time or expenses they incurred in providing 
those services.
  Mr. President, how much more mismanagement of taxpayer money will we 
tolerate? When is enough, enough? Well, enough is enough for me.
  Mr. President, I cannot sit idly by while our tax dollars are used 
and abused by a Washington bureaucracy.
  The proposal I am offering today, along with several of my 
colleagues, is the fair solution to an agency run amok. It sends arts 
money directly to the States, eliminating the high administrative costs 
currently plaguing the agency. It shifts control from Washington 
bureaucrats to those closest to our artists and calls for strict 
auditing by the States. It initiates a more equitable distribution of 
Federal arts dollars on a per capita basis, benefiting more currently 
underserved areas, and significantly increasing the award amounts for 
all but a few States. Most of all, it makes good on the original 
mission of the NEA--to broaden public access to the arts.
  The horrendous realities I have outlined today have compelled many, 
including myself, to the conclusion that, over the years, the NEA has 
failed to live up to its legislative mandate of increasing access to 
the arts and has gotten into the business of picking favorites--making 
the National Endowment the arbiters of art in our culture.
  In summary, the NEA is rife with abuses: extravagant administrative 
costs; poor management, and a vacuum of oversight, according to the 
GAO; glaring inequities in distribution; a biased process where the 
East does better than the South, the big cities do better than rural 
America, Democratic districts do three times better than Republican 
districts, higher-income States fare better than lower-income States, 
and the haves get more and the have-nots continue to have 
not; wholesale failure to fulfill its original mission to broaden 
public access to the arts, and the adoption of a kind of trickle-down 
arts theory in which the arbiters of art reside primarily in 
Washington, DC. My amendment would end publicly subsidized cultural 
elitism by sending these decisions back to the States, more money for 
the arts and less for the bureaucrats, more resources for 45 of the 50 
States and less for 5 States, more accountability and more local 
control.

  I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. It is fair. It is 
equitable. It is common sense. And the artists, musicians, and writers 
in your home State depend upon the resources that this amendment will 
make available.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). The Senator from Virginia is 
recognized.
  (The remarks of Mr. Warner pertaining to the introduction of S. 1177 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. SESSIONS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama is recognized.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to be 
here today to join with my good friend from Arkansas, Senator 
Hutchinson in cosponsoring what I think is an outstanding amendment to 
the fiscal year 1998 Interior Department appropriations bill, an 
amendment which will do more for the arts in America than we have ever 
done before. Simply put, the Hutchinson/Sessions amendment will produce 
more diversity and quality in the arts. We need and I strongly support 
a healthy arts community in America. It is important and it is 
valuable.
  Madam President, I attended a liberal arts college. I believe in 
having quality arts to lift and improve the lives of American citizens. 
I think we ought to strengthen it. I encourage and salute those who 
contribute selflessly to the symphonies and museums and all sorts of 
artistic activities in their communities. This is what helps make us 
the great culture and Nation that we are. I want to make sure that 
people understand that our goal in passing this amendment is one and 
one goal only, to eliminate the Washington waste, bureaucracy and 
mismanagement while continuing to support in a very real way the arts 
in this country.
  Madam President, I oppose the systematic elitism in funding for the 
arts. I oppose funding of the arcane, the pornographic, the bizarre and 
just plain silly. I oppose funding to the politically correct crowd and 
I oppose the partisan funding, as the Senator from Arkansas has so 
eloquently pointed out. So many of these funds go for partisan reasons. 
We can do better with

[[Page S9313]]

our funding process, and we have far too much money going in directions 
that are not healthy for America.
  I know everybody has a different opinion of art. There is a piece of 
art work in my hometown of Mobile, AL, a metal structure that is now 
rusted that a distinguished artist in town was recently commenting 
about. Someone said, ``Well, they wanted something that would attract 
people's attention.'' And he said, ``Well, you can hang a dead horse in 
the square and that will attract people's attention but it won't be 
art.''
  Now, I know there is difference of opinion as to what art is and what 
we should do about it, but I feel very strongly that we can do better 
in managing our moneys.
  I am very familiar with the situation of the museum in Mobile, which 
wanted and sought a grant to receive funding to do art work in the 
foyer of their auditorium. They got the money, but they were told by 
the NEA that the artist had to be from New York, and by a NEA 
preselected artist, and she chose some art work on a burlap type of 
material. It stayed up for a few years and has now been removed and is 
currently being stored in the basement of the museum.
  But again, I suppose that expenditure was counted as an expenditure 
to Alabama when in fact it was really an expenditure to New York. So I 
submit to the Members of this body that we can be for the arts, but we 
must make sure that the moneys we spend are spent wisely on the arts.
  As to the National Endowment for the Arts, I say it has had its 
chance. Year after year after year they have come before this body, and 
they have faced strong criticism and questions about their 
mismanagement and poor funding decisions and still nothing has changed. 
Madam President, I submit that we can do more and that we can do better 
with this money.
  The sad fact is that the National Endowment for the Arts is captive 
of an artistic elitism complicated by an insider cronyism and political 
favoritism undermined by mismanagement and wholly without a vision to 
make a difference for arts in America. In fact, we have learned, as we 
have studied the numbers, that only 15 percent of the grants, in fiscal 
year 1997, by the NEA went to new groups; 85 percent of the grants are 
just the re-funding of the same old art programs which the NEA has 
funded before.
  The Hutchinson-Sessions amendment does more for the arts. It takes 
the Senate appropriations figure, $1,060,000, which has already been 
propounded in the bill before us today and it eliminates the Washington 
bureaucracy and sends all the money down to the people. It expands the 
money to all the regions and States in this country.
  I would like to show you a chart that indicates the mission statement 
of the NEA. The mission statement clearly states:

       To foster the excellence, diversity and vitality of the 
     arts in the United States, and to broaden public access to 
     the arts.

  Madam President, when you have only six cities receiving one-third of 
the national expenditures, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, 
New York, and Washington, DC, we are not broadening public access to 
the arts. And when we have one city, New York City, in fiscal year 1997 
receiving more money than a total of 29 other States, including my home 
State of Alabama, something is wrong. The National Endowment for the 
Arts is not administering these grants fairly, wisely, or effectively.
  Madam President, these are not just my figures or some Republican 
agenda. NBC's ``Dateline'' with Jane Pauley on July 17, 1997, exposed 
these very figures. They pointed out just how disproportionate the 
funding is. They pointed out that the NEA provided a $31,000 grant for 
a film called ``Watermelon Woman'' which involved sexually explicit 
homosexual activities, which was paid for entirely by the American 
taxpayer.
  People say, Well, you don't believe in the first amendment, Jeff. You 
don't respect freedom of the arts.
  I respect the freedom of the arts. I respect the first amendment. I 
am an attorney, and I believe very deeply in the first amendment, but I 
must say I don't think the hard-working taxpayers of Alabama, who are 
getting drastically shortchanged in this funding process, ought to be 
required to fund things that simply offend their sense of decency and 
their standards of ethics and faith. It is just not the kind of thing 
we ought to do, and we have every right as representatives of the 
people to come before this body and demand that governmental agencies 
adhere to proper standards and spend their money wisely and 
effectively. And when they do not, we have every right to abolish those 
agencies and shift that money in a way which will improve the 
livelihood of the people.
  NBC's ``Dateline'' talked about the Whitney Museum in New York, which 
has a $30 million endowment, receiving a $400,000 NEA grant last year. 
That is nearly as much money as the entire State of Alabama received 
last year from the National Endowment for the Arts, and I am also 
offended by Chairman Jane Alexander's suggestion that artistic 
endeavors only appear in certain select areas of the country.
  The distinguished Senator from Montana, Senator Baucus, discussed the 
Shakespeare in the Park festival in his home State of Montana. I would 
just point out to the Senator, that under this amendment, as we propose 
it, the State of Montana would receive a $165,000 increase in funding. 
If Alabama only had 8 or 10 projects approved by the NEA--Montana with 
less people probably has about the same number--that would be $16,000 
additional for each grant recipient in the State of Montana under our 
amendment. State after State after State shows benefits and funding 
increased under our proposal. Over 12 or more States receive twice as 
much funding. States like Michigan, Alabama, Florida, Indiana receive 
twice as much funding under the Hutchinson-Sessions amendment as under 
the present NEA formula for distributing grants. This is an outrage, I 
submit, in the that way we have allowed for this funding formula to 
continue.
  Madam President, our amendment will eliminate unnecessary 
bureaucratic spending. It eliminates the arcane, pornographic, bizarre, 
and just plain silly projects that are being funded by the National 
Endowment for the Arts. It ends the political favoritism that is being 
uncovered, which clearly shows that we are not spending the money in an 
effective way.
  So this, I submit to the Members of this body, is a very important 
vote. We have the opportunity today without any increase in taxes, to 
provide a historic infusion of funds to local artists in every State 
across this country. It is critical that we send the money to the 
States where they can wisely and effectively spend it.
  Madam President, if the money is sent directly to my home State of 
Alabama, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery, one of the 
finest facilities in the world--a facility which Sir Anthony Hopkins 
referred to as the finest Shakespeare facility he has ever performed 
at--would receive more than the $15,000 they received last year from 
the National Endowment for the Arts.
  Madam President, I feel very strongly about this amendment. I salute 
my colleague from Arkansas, Mr. Hutchinson, for the hard work he has 
put into it, and I am honored to be an original cosponsor of it.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina is recognized.
  Mr. HELMS. Madam President, may I inquire of the Chair if there is 
another amendment pending?
  Mr. GORTON. Will the Senator yield?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mr. GORTON. As manager of the bill, I say to my colleague from North 
Carolina, I asked both the previous two Senators who spoke, and Senator 
Hutchison who preceded them, not to introduce their block grant 
amendments because it seemed to me most logical that the proposal of 
the Senator from North Carolina, which would effectively reflect the 
House position of abolishing an appropriation for the National 
Endowment for the Arts, logically ought to go first. So I believe the 
answer to the Senator's question is a committee amendment is the 
business and the amendment that the Senator from North Carolina 
proposes, I think, would be in order.
  Mr. HELMS. I thank the Senator.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The first committee amendment is the pending 
business.

[[Page S9314]]

  Mr. HELMS. I am sorry, I did not understand the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending business is the first committee 
amendment.
  Mr. HELMS. That is subject to amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. It is.
  Mr. HELMS. I am sorry, I just walked into the Chamber. Is it 
necessary to set aside that amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator may either offer an amendment to 
the first committee amendment, or he may request that all six committee 
amendments be set aside.
  Mr. HELMS. Madam President, Senator Ashcroft of Missouri is on an 
airplane at this moment, which I hope is approaching Washington. It has 
been delayed, but he will be here shortly to offer the amendment on 
which I desire to speak.
  I am honored to cosponsor this amendment, which would eliminate 
funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. Other Senators will 
voice their support, I believe, for the Ashcroft-Helms amendment; 
certainly the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma [Mr. Inhofe], and the 
senior Senator from Kansas [Mr. Brownback]. In any case, I commend 
Senator Ashcroft's willingness to exercise strong leadership on this 
issue. We will proceed while looking forward to his arrival on the 
Senate floor.
  The other day, John Ashcroft and I were visiting on this subject, and 
we were reflecting upon the fact that more than 8 years have passed 
since an award-winning, blasphemous, and--how to put it--stomach-
churning photograph of a crucifix soaked in urine alerted this Senate 
to the disgusting decision by the National Endowment for the Arts to 
reward the so-called artist who conceived the concept and submitted it 
for a grant with a substantial amount of the taxpayers' money.
  Along about the same time I came into possession of copies of the so-
called, now well-known, Mapplethorpe artistry, which was a homosexual 
display. I recall bringing that to this floor. The distinguished 
Senator from West Virginia was sitting right over there, and another 
Senator was speaking. I don't remember which one. I asked Senator Byrd 
if he would consider an amendment to outlaw something that I thought 
was grievously blasphemous, and I thought that he might think so, too. 
I remember that I showed Senator Byrd the Mapplethorpe photos. I will 
say that he exclaimed very definitely that he found them repulsive. The 
bottom line is that he took my amendment and it was accepted on the 
legislation. That is when the hard feelings developed with certain 
people who favored not restraining the National Endowment for the Arts.
  During the 8 years that have elapsed since that evening that I came 
and spoke to Senator Byrd, the Senate has learned a very great deal 
about the way the National Endowment for the Arts conducts its affairs, 
and, thank the Lord, so have many millions of Americans found out about 
it across the land. They constitute loud voice to echo exactly what the 
House of Representatives did the month before last, I believe it was, 
in cutting off all funding, zeroing the National Endowment for the 
Arts. For one thing, it is self-evident that many of the beneficiaries 
of NEA grants are contemptuous of--how to say it--traditional moral 
standards.

  Now, we have stripped the phony veneer from the curiously elitist 
nature of those people who are self-selected arts experts. I run into 
them frequently. I hear from some in North Carolina, one in 
particular--he was born rich, never did a day's work in his life. He 
spends much of his time writing letters to me complaining about my not 
caring about the arts. Well, of course I do care about the arts. I have 
grandchildren who participate, and I think very well, in the arts. But 
they don't participate in the kind of things that I am talking about 
here today.
  We have stripped, as I say, the phony veneer from those people. Above 
all, we have learned the lengths that this crowd supporting the 
National Endowment for the Arts will go, and has been going, in order 
to preserve their access to millions of dollars of the taxpayers' 
money.
  I am going to get down to the nitty-gritty. It is going to offend 
some people here and there. Once the true nature of the National 
Endowment for the Arts became clear, more and more Senators have joined 
in supporting simple, commonsense measures to ensure that the NEA is 
operated in a reasonable manner. We have endeavored, sometimes 
successfully, sometimes not, to put an end to Federal grants, spending 
the taxpayers' money rewarding obscene or patently offensive work. We 
have worked to try to make sure that the NEA grants go to institutions 
rather than to individual artists. At every step, the arts 
establishment and its defenders in the left wing media--and in 
Congress, I might add--have vigorously opposed those reasonable 
reforms, often implying or downright declaring that anybody opposing 
such Federal grants is ignorant and indifferent to culture and art.
  There is a fellow in Massachusetts who used the words, phony baloney, 
the other day. I am going to borrow those two words from him and apply 
it to that kind of stand. I suppose this sort of opposition will 
continue just as long as the Congress allows the National Endowment for 
the Arts to cater to phony, self-appointed artists who insist on using 
the American taxpayers' money to finance anything they want to drag up 
from the sewer and declare to be art.
  But enough is surely enough. Millions of Americans have come to the 
conclusion that the National Endowment for the Arts is beyond salvation 
as a reasonable Federal agency. The amendment which the Senator from 
Missouri will a little later on send to the desk proposes to fund the 
NEA at a deserving level, exactly what it deserves--zero. To put it 
bluntly, I propose that none of the taxpayers' money be wasted by this 
agency anymore.
  I have done my best to work in good faith with administrators, past 
and present, of the National Endowment for the Arts. The present 
administrator, Jane Alexander, is a gracious lady. I like her 
personally, and I think she means well. But the problem persists: 
Despite all of the rhetoric, despite all the promises, the National 
Endowment for the Arts continues to underwrite projects that offend the 
sensibilities of millions of American taxpayers who resent the NEA's 
giving the taxpayers' money to self-styled artists whose art comes 
straight from the gutter and the sewer.
  So, this amendment that Senator Ashcroft and I will formally offer 
shortly keeps faith with the courageous decision of the House of 
Representatives to withhold funding from the National Endowment for the 
Arts during the House consideration of H.R. 2107, the Interior 
appropriations bill. The Senate, simply said, ought to do what is right 
and follow suit.
  Following that vote in the House of Representatives, the NEA's 
supporters did the usual thing. They trotted out their customary 
absurdities in describing an America without art, an America without 
culture unless the Senate restores full funding to the NEA. And they 
did that with violins being played and weeping voices. Baloney. Perhaps 
the Senate will default on its responsibilities, but it will have to do 
it after a number of Senators have made clear why the House action with 
reference to the NEA was entirely justified.

  Madam President, Americans watching and hearing this Senate session 
this afternoon on C-SPAN should be prepared, sooner or later, for 
another dose of the same old, tired rhetoric about how the survival of 
arts in America depends upon the NEA--when the truth of the matter is 
that American arts were thriving long before the agency received its 
first penny, its first appropriation, back in 1966, and the arts will 
continue to flourish and flower long after the NEA has disappeared from 
the radar screen.
  In any event, the American people may be forgiven for wondering 
precisely how do the powers-that-be at the National Endowment for the 
Arts define--define--American arts and culture. Let's do a little 
thinking about that. The agency's recent grant to the Whitney Museum 
may provide a useful clue. On July 15, 1997, the news program 
``Dateline'' NBC reported that the NEA had given a grant of--now get 
this--$400,000 to the Whitney Museum. As NBC pointed out, the Whitney 
Museum is the beneficiary already of an unusually large private 
endowment. Yet the museum is nevertheless

[[Page S9315]]

deemed by the NEA to be a worthy recipient for Federal taxpayers' 
dollars.
  What exactly is it about the Whitney Museum that makes it so 
worthy? Certainly, one must hope, not the 1997 biennial exhibition.

  The average taxpayer sitting in North Carolina or Idaho, or wherever, 
will never know anything about this unless the news media tells them or 
unless they are watching C-SPAN at this moment. But this year's 
biennial--and this is just an example --this year's biennial featured 
an exhibit that launched an attack on Santa Claus. The Kansas City Star 
newspaper reviewed the show and included this observation:

       The myth of Santa propounded by Disney and Hallmark is 
     rendered all but unrecognizable by Paul McCarthy's video 
     installation of a wildly perverted Santa's workshop. The main 
     players, raunchy art-girl elves dressed in skimpy elf tunics 
     and sticky-dirty with chocolate sauce, alternately devote 
     themselves to creating confections and performing lewd acts 
     with stuffed animals, one of them large and animate.

  Oh, boy, Madam President, if that is art, then the sewer is a 
swimming pool. In awarding the show's ``booby prize'' to Mr. McCarthy, 
the Wall Street Journal's Deborah Solomon wrote this:

       Reader, I can only hope you're not eating your breakfast 
     when I tell you that his ``Santa's Workshop'' revolves around 
     the theme of Christmas personalities doing weird things with 
     excrement.

  Indeed. And I hope anyone listening to this debate in this audience 
this afternoon will inquire of the Senators from their States why they 
approve of a Federal agency that awards $400,000 of the taxpayers' 
money to the curators of a museum who countenance such an exhibit.
  Oh, I can hear it, Madam President. I have been hearing it for over 8 
years. ``Oh,'' they say, ``such grants of questionable taste are purely 
isolated incidents.'' The trouble with that is that the evidence 
suggests otherwise, because last year, $150,000 of the NEA's funds went 
to a project by a choreographer named Mark Morris, and he is the very 
same Mark Morris who once staged a homosexual version of ``The 
Nutcracker Suite,'' called ``The Hard Nut.'' The taxpayer will be 
forgiven for wondering whether Mr. Morris' future work will deal with 
similar material.
  I believe we already heard all we want to hear about last year's 
$31,500 grant for the production of the film ``Watermelon Woman,'' to 
which two or three Senators have already alluded on this floor this 
afternoon. This film was made by and about lesbians and featured in the 
words of the reviewer ``the hottest lesbian sex scene ever recorded on 
celluloid.'' And this is one of the art projects that the National 
Endowment for the Arts, Madam President, said we must have in order to 
preserve art and culture in our society.
  Perhaps worst of all, however, is a travesty that emerged from a 
$25,000 grant to an organization called FC2, a bunch of weirdoes 
responsible for publishing, among other sickening things, Doug Rice's 
book entitled ``Blood of Mugwump: A Tiresian Tale of Incest.''
  Oh, boy, what an artistic achievement that is. According to the back 
cover of the book, the plot, if you can call it a plot, describes ``[a] 
member of a clan of Catholic, gender-shifting vampires [setting] out to 
discover himself in his sister's body.''
  Twenty-five thousand dollars of your money, Mr. and Mrs. America, 
goes so we can keep art flourishing in the United States.
  That is not the half of it, Madam President. Suffice it to say that 
our staff members were--and I am talking about the folks I work for in 
my office, the finest young people you ever saw--they were just about 
ready to throw up earlier today after they had glanced through this 
wretched book's description of incestuous sexual activity, paid for 
with the taxpayers' money, mind you.
  Whether all this garbage is metaphorical or literal or whatever, I 
don't know, I don't care, and I don't want to know. What I want to know 
is how long we are going to tolerate the National Endowment for the 
Arts continuing to fund this kind of garbage. I do know, and I have 
known this for a long time, and I have said it a thousand times on this 
floor--and maybe if I live long enough I will say it another thousand 
times: the American taxpayers should not be forced to pay for stuff 
like this. But if one opens this book to the copyright page, there it 
is: The seal of approval from and by the National Endowment for the 
Arts.

  Let me say that again--and I like Jane Alexander, she is a nice 
lady--but she is not controlling that shop down there. I cannot believe 
that she is. Let me be clear. I am not calling for censorship. I come 
from the news business. I made my living that way for most of my life 
before I came here. But this is not censorship to say we are not going 
to pay for this kind of mess anymore. I say again what I have said many 
times, I don't have any problem with some guy going in the men's room 
and scrawling dirty words on the wall, provided he pays for his own 
crayons and provided he owns the men's room. Making the taxpayers pay 
for it is what I object to.
  This Doug Rice is entitled to write whatever he pleases. He may try 
to shock and offend whatever poor souls across America run across his 
foul literary pretense, but let me reiterate, again and again, the 
American taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize such sewage as 
this work.
  But you know, Madam President, many Americans believe--and I agree 
with them--that grants such as these are sufficient reason to end, once 
and for all, funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. I suspect 
that the American people would be even more resolute in their 
opposition to the NEA if they were aware of other practices of the NEA 
that bring the NEA's legitimacy into question.
  To begin with, the American public needs to know about the NEA's 
practice of carefully rewarding its supporters and past beneficiaries. 
For example, even the New York Times, liberal as it is, loving the NEA 
as it does, has reported that 85 percent of this year's recipients have 
previously fed at the NEA trough.
  How have they done it? I will tell you. The NEA does not consider the 
financial position of its applicants. That would step on some toes, you 
know. Instead, the NEA continues to hand out money to institutions that 
have a conspicuous lack of need--they don't need it--for being handed 
large sums of the taxpayers' money.
  Harvard University--now get this, Harvard, which has in its bank 
accounts an endowment of more than $6 billion--billion with a ``b''--$6 
billion; nevertheless, it was sent $150,000 by the National Endowment 
for the Arts. What for? I will quote it to you:

       To support augmentation of the Harvard University Art 
     Museum's endowment.

  Doesn't that grab you? That just makes me tearful with joy. If you 
believe that, you will believe anything.
  Phillips Academy, one of the most prestigious boarding schools in the 
country, received $125,000 from the NEA this year.
  The University of California at Berkeley received $135,500.
  Princeton University, with its total endowment exceeding $2.6 billion 
that they have already gotten from private sources, nevertheless the 
good old NEA sent them $20,000 of taxpayers' money. Now, how do you 
like them apples?
  Yale University--I am not going to let them get off the hook--with a 
total endowment fund of $3.5 billion which it had gotten from private 
sources, received $100,000 from the NEA for the Yale Repertory Theater 
for--I want you to guess what for--a celebration of the 100th birthday 
of a Marxist playwright, Bertolt Brecht.
  Boy, I know the people in Shetland Switch will be delighted to hear 
that their money was sent there. That is exactly what we count on our 
Federal Government to do.
  Additional scrutiny of NEA grants provides countless examples of such 
financial judgment. For one example, bureaucracy being piled upon 
bureaucracy. How do they do it? Very simple. The NEA gives grants to 
the Federal Government itself. That is a neat trick, isn't it? For 
example, the Federal Facilities Council of the State Department--and I 
am going to speak to Madeleine Albright about this--will receive from 
the NEA up to $10,000--now stay with me--up to $10,000 ``to support a 
partnership of Federal agencies convened to identify and advance 
technologies, processes and management practices that improve the 
planning, design, construction, operation, and evaluation of Federal 
facilities and enable more effective utilization of limited 
resources.''
  Madeleine, you better come home.

[[Page S9316]]

  Seriously, Madam President, what does all of this mean? For those of 
us not fluent in the language of bureaucrats, your guess would be as 
good as anybody's, but only in Washington would one Federal agency fund 
another Federal agency for a study on how to increase efficiency.
  Finally, there are the so-called planning and stabilization grants 
for which the NEA spent more than 10 million bucks this year. And what 
is the purpose of those grants? Mostly for giveaway gambits like the 
$125,000 grant to Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Inc., in Lee, MA, 
which was given the money not because it needed the money, but they 
wanted to increase their cash reserve a little bit.
  Well, I expect there are some Senators around here who would like to 
have their cash reserves increased a little bit.
  This, to be serious about it, I say to Senators and ladies and 
gentlemen who may be listening, this is your tax money. And I want to 
ask you, How's your cash reserve?

  But let us be very clear about what the NEA is doing. It is putting 
your tax dollars--no questions asked--into the bank accounts of artists 
and institutions for which there is simply no precedent--no precedent--
for these handouts.
  Even disadvantaged businesses that qualify for low-interest loans 
from the Government must pay back the money, but not these rich folks. 
If any of these struggling small businesspeople asked for a cash-direct 
handout from the Federal Government, they would be laughed off the 
premises and they would be recommended for a medical examination.
  Madam President, I am not going to belabor the subject anymore except 
for one closing observation. I say this with all seriousness. What does 
or does not constitute art is not decreed from on high by the National 
Endowment for the Arts. Art and culture--for better or worse--should 
remain in the hands of the American people, not bureaucrats. Continued 
funding of the NEA not only wastes the taxpayers' money on a small 
contingent of wealthy elitists, it also continues the arrogant 
assumption that a Government-funded arts establishment must--must--
determine what art is fit for public consumption.
  I think there is no exaggeration involved in saying that this 
assumption is contrary to the Founding Fathers' notions of freedom and 
liberty on which I was taught as a little boy that this Nation was 
built. In fact, I think that if Jefferson and Franklin and all the rest 
came around here one of these afternoons, I suspect they would agree 
with millions of Americans who have so little regard for the entity 
known as the National Endowment for the Arts.
  Thank you, Madam President. I yield the floor.
  Mr. DeWINE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio is recognized.


           Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park

  Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, I would like to take a moment to discuss 
a project of great importance to me and to the people of the State of 
Ohio. I am referring to funding for the Dayton Aviation Heritage 
National Historical Park. This project is currently included in the 
House version of the bill that we are currently debating. I am very 
hopeful that it will receive full consideration by the conference 
committee and be included in the final bill that is reported by the 
conference committee.
  Madam President, on October 16, 1992, Congress established the Dayton 
Aviation Heritage National Historical Park to commemorate the legacy of 
two Daytonians, Orville and Wilbur Wright and their significant 
contribution to human history through their pioneering exploration of 
flight.
  Madam President, in an effort to create a single coordinated facility 
recognizing the Wright Brothers' work in Dayton, in 1994 the National 
Park Service assumed responsibility for the remains of the brothers' 
bicycle company. And then 2 years later, in 1996, the Park Service 
obtained the surrounding property which is known locally as the Hoover 
block.
  Madam President, the Hoover block has been designated as the core 
site for Federal management of the Dayton Aviation Park and will be the 
park headquarters and will also be the primary visitor center.
  From 1890 to 1895, this very site served as the location of the 
brothers' print shop, the print shop called Wright & Wright Job 
Printers, which, by the way, printed the Tattler, a newspaper founded 
by the famous Daytonian and Ohioan black poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar.
  Madam President, timely restoration of these sites is critical to 
ensure the building will be renovated and open to the public by the 
year 2003 when Ohio and the rest of the Nation and the world will 
celebrate the centennial of powered flight.
  Trying to meet this deadline, Madam President, I have been working 
with my colleagues in the Ohio delegation in the House, most notably, 
Congressman Ralph Regula, Congressman David Hobson, and Congressman 
Tony Hall, working with them to ensure and secure funding for the 
upcoming fiscal year so that renovations can proceed without delay.

  Madam President, I think that this project has national significance. 
It has significance for my home community, the Miami Valley in Ohio, 
and the entire State of Ohio. I grew up about 20 miles from where the 
Wright Brothers really learned to fly and where they did their pioneer 
work, where they did their studies, and where they prepared to fly.
  Madam President, I note the presence on the floor of my good friend 
from Washington, Senator Slade Gorton, who is of course the chairman of 
the appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior. I already have had 
several conversations with my friend and colleague regarding this 
particular project. He knows well of my personal interest in the 
project. I really wish to express to him my appreciation for his 
willingness to pursue this matter in the conference committee.
  Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington is recognized.
  Mr. GORTON. I thank the Senator from Ohio for his eloquent statement. 
I know how important this project is to Senator DeWine. As he has 
stated, we have talked about this project on several occasions over the 
past 2 months, and I must confess that the Senator's enthusiasm for his 
project has rubbed off on this Senator. As my colleagues may know, the 
Senator from Ohio grew up not far from where the Wright Brothers made 
their dreams of powered flight a reality. It also is no secret that the 
legacy of the Wright Brothers is very much alive and well in my own 
State of Washington.
  Madam President, I want to assure the Senator from Ohio that he has 
convinced me of the merits of this effort to restore this important 
historical landmark in time for the centennial celebration of powered 
flight less than 6 years from now. I am strongly inclined to support 
his position in our inevitable conference with the House of 
Representatives on the subject.
  I also urge my friends from Ohio to keep me and the members of my 
subcommittee informed of his continued efforts and those of the Dayton 
community as it prepares for the celebration in the year 2003.
  Mr. DeWINE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio is recognized.
  Mr. DeWINE. I thank my colleague for his work on this bill and for 
his commitment to pursue this issue in conference. I appreciate that 
very, very much. It means a great deal to me and to our community and 
to our State. I thank him very much.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. ABRAHAM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan is recognized.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. Thank you, Madam President.


                    National Endowment for the Arts

  Mr. ABRAHAM. Madam President, I rise today to speak about a topic 
which has been ostensibly discussed this afternoon, namely, the portion 
of the Interior appropriations bill devoted to the National Endowment 
for the Arts. It is my plan--and still in the process of being 
drafted--to offer a slightly different type of an amendment from the 
ones which have been discussed already. I do not have that amendment 
here, so I will not be introducing it at this time. I am going to be 
trying to work with some of the others who have concern about this 
issue to determine exactly how we might finally present

[[Page S9317]]

the proposal I am going to discuss here today.
  I rise as a Senator who finds himself, and has since he arrived in 
the Senate, somewhat perplexed as to how we should proceed with regard 
to funding for the arts. I am an enthusiastic supporter of the arts. I 
think that it is in the Nation's interest, certainly, to do the most we 
can with scarce resources to try to encourage young artists, regardless 
of their specialties, to pursue their interests and their creative 
skills. And at the same time it is quite clear that the method that has 
been used recently, at least, has prompted a great deal of controversy 
and, in my judgment, to a large extent set back the progress with 
regard to our Nation's artistic activities.

  Because what we have had for too long, it seems, is this ongoing 
debate between whether or not the National Endowment for the Arts is 
properly funded by the Federal Government or whether it should be 
eliminated.
  What we have is a debate that essentially, on the one hand, argues 
that taxpayer dollars should not be used to support what many consider 
to be obscene activities or inappropriate activities, and, on the other 
hand, we hear from the arts community--and I have certainly heard from 
a number of individuals representing that community since I have gotten 
to the Senate--that the efforts on the part of Congress to either limit 
the funding or to put strings on the funding constitute, if not an 
explicit form of censorship, certainly an implicit form of censorship.
  In addition, I hear in my State a lot of concerns because, as the 
charts which were here earlier indicate, our State is not getting the 
sort of revenues and resources to work with as many other states of 
equivalent size. So there is a frustration both with the inadequacy of 
the resources which come back to my State of Michigan as well as some 
concern about whether or not Washington expertise is in the best 
position to determine which projects in our State should be supported.
  In my judgment, the logical solution to all of this is to maintain a 
national entity which oversees various arts activities and supports 
those which are worthy of such support but to not have it funded by the 
taxpayers' dollars. In other words, what we ought to do, in my 
judgment, is to privatize a national program, an American endowment, if 
you will, for the arts, one which receives no direct taxpayer support 
but one which nonetheless can perform some of the national 
responsibilities that have been outlined by advocates of the existing 
NEA.
  If it were done in that fashion, Madam President, we would be in a 
position where at a national level determinations could be made as to 
priority arts programs. Those priorities could be given support, and 
the support would not necessarily therefore have to come with a lot of 
strings attached. If performing artists became a priority, individual 
artists became a priority, a national endowment not supported by 
taxpayers' dollars would be able to support such efforts.
  Today, because of the handcuffs which have been attached in recent 
appropriations bills, that cannot happen. In short, we can get away 
from this debate between obscenity on the one hand and censorship on 
the other and support the arts in a private fashion.
  Some have argued this is not feasible, that there is no way to come 
up with the resources required. But in my judgment that is wrong. Just 
as a starting point, it is currently the case that over $9 billion a 
year is expended in support of arts activities across this country. 
Indeed, a number of the individual arts organizations have larger, 
substantially larger, annual budgets than the National Endowment for 
the Arts. Indeed, the amount of money that we currently spend in the 
NEA on an annual basis--$100 million--is just a fraction of the $9 
billion which is annually expended on these types of programs. It is 
smaller than that expended by the Lincoln Center, by a variety of other 
very large and well-known arts organizations.
  Indeed, I believe, as we have seen by the remarkable outpouring of 
support from the arts community itself, whether they are famous artists 
individually or national organizations, corporations who deal in arts 
and entertainment, it would seem to me that the ability to raise funds 
for such an independent entity would be rather within our reach.
  My plan basically is to privatize the NEA over the next 3 years. In 
this year's appropriations bill we would, consequently, reduce funding 
by approximately one-third, although we would make it feasible for the 
NEA to expend a percentage of its dollars it has to begin a fundraising 
program to find ways to privatize the entity at the end of the 3-year 
period. In other words, we would begin the process. It would not be 
done overnight. It would allow for existing institutions, who are 
beneficiaries of NEA support, to not find themselves overnight without 
any support but on notice that in 3 years the support would be coming 
from a private entity.

  In exchange, what I would envision is to spend these dollars, which 
would be reduced on an annual basis, on other very important national 
treasures. It is currently the case, for instance, Madam President, 
that the Star-Spangled Banner, the actual flag that prompted Francis 
Scott Key to write our Nation's national anthem, is in desperate need 
of financial support for purposes of preserving that flag.
  Ellis Island, the site of the arrival of millions of immigrants to 
this country--one of the true historical treasures--is in decay and in 
desperate need of support. The Presidential Papers of many of our 
Nation's Chief Executives are in a position where the preservation of 
those documents is at risk.
  My amendment will allocate the funds that are being reduced from the 
NEA to the support of these national treasures, treasures which I think 
virtually every Member of Congress could agree deserve support.
  If my amendment were to pass this year, my plan would be to follow up 
with a variety of very specific actions designed to be consistent with 
the support for a privatized NEA, including a sense-of-the-Senate 
amendment which I will be offering to specifically express the Senate 
support for a private ongoing NEA outside of taxpayer support, and 
other ideas such as a checkoff plan by which taxpayers could direct 
individual contributions to an independent entity.
  The bottom line is this, Madam President, we have to make decisions 
all the time about priorities. It seems to me in the area of the 
National Endowment for the Arts, the logical thing is to preserve it in 
a way that allows it to function in its fullest sense, and to function 
independently and privately. When I offer my amendment, I will discuss 
this in greater detail.

  In the meantime, I think we have an obligation, whether it is to 
preserve the Star-Spangled Banner itself, or to renovate Ellis Island 
so it can be preserved, or to make sure the papers of our Presidents 
are preserved, we have an obligation to preserve them.
  I believe the amendment I will be offering strikes the right balance. 
My amendment is quite consistent with that offered earlier by Senator 
Hutchison. I have indicated I would support that approach as well, 
because it does not immediately phase out the support which many of our 
State and local arts organizations receive. I think my amendment moves 
us in the right direction because it brings us to a point, in a short 
period of time, over 3 years, where the National Endowment for the Arts 
would not have to be here each year trying to justify itself on Capitol 
Hill, but could operate with unfettered discretion and make its own 
judgments and eliminate the debate between censorship and obscenity.
  The best way to do that is to take the taxpayers out of the picture 
so they can make independent decisions and not worry about the 
political debate it finds itself in. Then we can direct the resources 
which our taxpayers send to Washington to preserve items such as a 
President's papers, Ellis Island and a variety of other national parks 
and national institutions in desperate need of support. This would be 
the most sensible way to approach it.
  It is my plan currently to offer an amendment, once it is fully 
drafted, to that effect.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Allard). The Senator from New York.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I have the honor to rise in support of 
the distinguished chairman's remarks in regard to the proposed 
allocation of appropriations for the National Endowment for the Arts.

[[Page S9318]]

  I will presume upon the Senate's time on a relatively quiet afternoon 
to give just a little background of the measure that is before the 
Senate today.
  Once again we seem to be doing a major disservice to ourselves with 
the politicization of matters that ought to be as far from politics as 
ever is possible: the support the Government provides, not expensive 
but nonetheless critical, for the arts of our Nation.
  It would seem that the National Endowment for the Arts is challenged 
on three fronts: first, whether our Nation even needs Federal funding 
for the arts, second, that the Endowment should do more to reduce 
objectionable art, and third, that the current grant apparatus 
disproportionately funds some regions more than others. If I might, I 
may be able to shed light on this triumverate.
  I was present at the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts 
which we are debating today, which we debated last year, and which we 
will debate henceforth how long, who knows.
  It was begun in a time of great national agreement on this subject 
and a rather clearer understanding, if I may say, than we sometimes 
have now, on the nature of this subject. This all began in the summer 
of 1961 when the musicians in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New 
York announced they could not continue under the contract they had with 
the trustees. They were members of local 802 of the American Federation 
of Musicians.
  Indeed, the prospect confronted us all that the Metropolitan, the 
Met, as we say in New York, would have to cancel its 1961-62 season. 
Then some inspired person had the thought, why not ask the newly 
appointed Secretary of Labor, Arthur J. Goldberg, to arbitrate the 
dispute? It was a natural thing for him to do; he was Secretary of 
Labor, this was a labor dispute. He was a great supporter of activities 
of this kind, a man of huge, varied talent. As an American Jew, he had 
served in the OSS behind German lines during World War II. He had been 
very close to the steelworkers. He had helped bring about the merger 
between the AFL and the CIO, what we now call the AFL-CIO, the American 
Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

  His wife Dorothy was a supremely gifted artist. He moved easily in 
the world of the arts, as well as of business and labor and government. 
He went on, of course, to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, 
and then in an act of great self-sacrifice--and he knew it at the time; 
I was with him at the time--he accepted the demand, if you put it that 
way, from President Johnson that he leave the Court and go to New York 
to be the United States permanent representative at the United Nations 
at a time of cold war crisis. It was his way to do such things and to 
accept such assignments.
  Now, in the life of the things he had done, arbitrating a dispute 
between, I believe, some 62 musicians and a well-established and 
attractive, civic-minded charity was not especially challenging, except 
he found something out. He found, as he put it, ``Mrs. August Belmont 
and Mrs. Lewis W. Douglas, who were the leaders of the trustees, didn't 
have any money.'' With the best will in the world, they could not meet 
the requests that the union was making. They were then making $170 
dollars a month. That comes to about $45 a week. That, sir, amounts to 
about $1 an hour. The minimum wage was twice that, or thereabouts, at 
that time. They were persons of world standing in the arts, but the 
arts could not provide them a living. What they were asking for was 
$268 a month--something like $60 a week, something like $1.50 an hour. 
With the best view in the world, all that Secretary Goldberg could do 
was to offer them a $10 a month raise. They made their living teaching 
and doing other things. They were devoted to music, but they had 
families, too, and the ordinary interests of persons who live an 
ordinary life, an ordinary citizen.
  What they were caught up with--and I do not want to take the Senate 
into a long discourse on economics, but it is a matter which comes to 
this floor in one mode or another almost every day--they were caught up 
with what came to be known as the cost disease of the personal 
services. This was a concept worked out by a great American economist, 
happily still vigorously pursuing his works, William Jay Baumol, then 
at Princeton University. He and his wife were opera lovers, as it 
happened, and he, too, noticed about this time that the Metropolitan 
Opera orchestra always seemed to be about to go on strike--this 
problem, that problem--and what was the matter here?
  His main field in economics is deeply abstract, hugely influential 
studies of transaction costs and things like that. But he said, well, 
listen, if I'm an economist, I ought to be able to understand some of 
this, and he came up with the idea of the cost disease. His colleagues, 
as is frequently the case in medicine and physics and economics, began 
to call this Baumol's disease.
  It can be very easily explained. The productivity of personal 
services does not grow, or grows very slowly compared to the 
productivity generally in the economy. You could put it this way. In 
1797, if you wished to perform a Mozart quartet, you needed four 
persons, four stringed instruments, and 43 minutes. Two centuries go by 
and to produce that stringed quartet you need four persons, four 
stringed instruments, and 43 minutes.
  If the great Mormon Temple Choir undertook to do a Bach oratory when 
it was founded, I believe there are 350 members of that choir, so to do 
a Bach oratory in 1897, that would take 350 musicians an hour and a 
half. A century goes by and it still takes 350 persons and an hour and 
a half. That is called Baumol's disease. If you play the ``Minute 
Waltz'' in 50 seconds, you speed up productivity but you do not get 
quite the same product.
  That is why teachers are relatively more expensive than farmers. 
Farmers have quadrupled and quintupled and quintupled again their 
productivity, but a first-grade teacher can handle about 18 young 6- or 
7-year-olds in 50-minute classes; you can put 190 kids in that class 
and it would not be the same.
  That is why we always have friction in our economy between those 
activities where we depend very much on the personal services and those 
which involve the mechanized services or the electronic services--think 
what we have seen in productivity in computation in the last 20 years.
  Secretary Goldberg thought what to do, and I think at this removed 
place in time it is no indiscretion to say he called me in and said, 
``Pat, I have no money for these musicians. We have to give them 
hope,'' and he said, ``Write a portion of my arbitration decision which 
says it's time the Federal Government gets into the business of helping 
with the arts.''
  This is not a new idea. George Washington wrote to a Rev. Joseph 
Willard, March 22, 1781, and said, ``The arts and sciences are 
essential to the prosperity of the state and to the ornament and 
happiness of human life. They have a claim to the encouragement of 
every lover of his country and mankind.'' It was as clear to George 
Washington as a matter could be. A few years later--that was in 1781. 
In 1785, Jefferson wrote to Madison:

       You see, I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts, but 
     it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object 
     is to improve the taste of my countrymen to increase their 
     reputation, to reconcile them to the respect of the world, 
     and to procure them its praise.

  And so, Mr. President, on that occasion, the arbitration decision was 
accompanied by a statement urging U.S. support for the performing arts. 
The New York Times--and forgive my provincialism, as that is where I 
come from--announced this on the front page, and this was Friday, 
December 15, 1961:

       Goldberg Urges U.S. To Subsidize Performing Arts. He Asks 
     Business and Labor To Help as He Gives Pay Increase in Met 
     Dispute.

  Then it says, ``Excerpts from proposals aid for the arts * * *.''
  Inside, they printed the text of Goldberg's statement urging U.S. 
support for performing arts.

       Washington, December 14--Following is the text of Secretary 
     of Labor Arthur J. Goldberg's statement on ``The State of the 
     Performing Arts,'' which was included in his findings in the 
     Metropolitan Opera dispute.

  The statement begins.

       The financial crisis of the Metropolitan Opera, which 
     raised the prospect that the 1961-62 season might not take 
     place, may prove to have been an event of larger significance 
     in this history of American culture.


[[Page S9319]]


  And, sir, it has. As the Senator from Vermont and Senators supporting 
this measure on both sides of the aisle will know, the National 
Endowment moved in direct sequence from the Goldberg finding to 
President Kennedy to the White House where President Kennedy 
established an advisory commission on the arts and humanities. Let's 
remember that the humanities are still part of this. Earlier, we heard 
the distinguished Senator from Michigan talking about the public papers 
of Presidents, which are now being very steadily published and 
compiled--they had not been, but now they are.
  Now, the question is, were we aware that one day we might be on the 
floor of the U.S. Senate facing charges like that? Sir, I would like to 
say with considerable vigor--if that is the term--of course, we were. 
We knew perfectly well that once the Federal Government got into the 
question of funding for the arts, we would get into the question of 
what arts to fund. It is not a very complicated sequence. This 
statement says,

       President Kennedy observed not long ago that the Federal 
     Government ``cannot order that culture exist, but the 
     Government can and should provide the climate and the 
     freedom, deeper and wider education, and the intellectual 
     curiosity in which culture flourishes.''

  And then Secretary Goldberg's prescient finding on the nature of our 
debate today:

       The issue of Federal support for the arts immediately 
     raises problems. Many persons oppose Federal support on 
     grounds that it will inevitably lead to political 
     interference. This is by no means an argument to be 
     dismissed, and the persons who make it are to be honored for 
     their concern for the freedom of artistic expression. In an 
     age in which a third of the globe languishes under the 
     pathetic banalities of ``Socialist realism,'' let no one 
     suppose that political control of the arts cannot be 
     achieved.

  I might say that again.

       In an age in which a third of the globe languishes under 
     the pathetic banalities of ``Socialist realism''--

  As it was called in the Soviet Union--

     let no one suppose that political control of the arts cannot 
     be achieved.

  As we look in that direction in the world right now, we realize that 
there are limits to such control, and the efforts of Government to 
control the arts will never, in the end, succeed. I will go back to our 
statement, sir.

  Justice Goldberg said, ``The overwhelming evidence is that the free 
American society has shown deep respect for the artistic integrity of 
the artist. Every attempt to interfere with that freedom has been met 
with vigorous opposition, not least from the artistic community * * * 
Artists are as susceptible to pressure as the next person, but for 
every artist who capitulates there is another from that unruly band to 
take his place, which the late Russell Lynes has described as the 
`uncaptured, the disrespectful, and the uncomfortable searchers after 
truth.' ''
  I don't want to make any special case for work that has no real 
purpose, save to shock--although some work that shocks in one 
generation is revered in the next. We would be very wrong to forget 
that. Artists have always sort of known it. In 1939, one of the great 
American painters, John Sloan, one of those who organized the armory 
show of 1913 in Manhattan, which brought the postimpressionist French 
painters from the School of Paris to Manhattan, and it shocked 
everybody. Picasso was shocking, as were the others. But in very short 
order they came to be revered. It took a generation, but it did happen.
  Sloan once said, in 1939--and he had a particular kind of humor in 
this regard, also a kind of clairvoyance. He said:

       It would be good to have a Ministry of Fine Art. Then we 
     would know where the enemy is.

  Indeed, I can recall an occasion when this subject was raised in a 
hearing before the Finance Committee and some witness, someone out of 
patience, said, ``All right, Senator, what would you do to have the 
Government encourage the arts?'' I said, ``Well, offhand, the only 
thing I can think to do would be for the Government to forbid them.'' 
That always has a lively effect, as we can look around the history of 
the world and the history of the 20th century and find out. But what we 
are doing here is supporting the arts.
  The National Endowment began as an effort to provide a living wage 
for musicians in a situation where, through no fault of their own, 
through the workings of the economic system--I mean the laws of 
economics, of productivity change, they needed public support, and it 
has flourished. It was a very interesting fact that after President 
Kennedy's assassination, the first thing this body did was to propose 
that a cultural center that was being discussed for the arts be named 
the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. That was a center 
that needed public support to make it possible in the present day. 
Those resources were there, and that activity has become part of the 
life of our Capital.
  Nonetheless it remains the case, inevitably it is the case, that 
there are places where particularly intensive activities in the arts 
occur--our third proposition at issue today. It is somehow in the 
nature of creative work that it tends to concentrate in one place and 
bring people to it. It is the normal experience of the arts, 
particularly large and expensive activities which involve musicians and 
performers and composers, as well as audiences. New York has been such 
a place since the beginning.
  It has been argued that it cannot be fair that one third of NEA 
grants go to six cities--with New York at the top. As it was when we 
examined this subject three decades ago, New York is the center of the 
arts--as it is of the visual arts, as it is of publishing--as it has 
been from the time we started our Nation with New York as the Capital.
  The purpose of culture is not to serve the Nation, but we speak 
proudly of our role in the last two centuries. And to the extent that 
we do, we speak of the things that have happened, to an extraordinary 
degree, things that have happened in the city of New York by people who 
came from all over the country--and the world--to that center of 
creative activity.
  Some propose that we take money away from the city of New York and 
distribute it elsewhere. This idea is very different. The idea is to 
strike at the artistic activities and expressions which are found at 
the center of the Nation's art world. There is something foreboding 
here. Do we break up the country into its competing parts? Do we want 
to go back to a time when those who had kept? They did not share--to 
reach out and bring to a place that did not have things they might need 
in health, in education, in standards of relations between labor and 
management--in a sense of sharing of common culture, of diffusing, and 
enriching of culture. I do hope not.
  It all began, sir--and I will conclude on this thought--at a time of 
promise in our Nation--great threat and danger, good God, yes, but 
promise, good spirits and creativity in Government. The Government 
thought through a problem that the public had, that the polity had, 
that the culture had, and came up with some answers. They have proven 
themselves powerfully important in what has now been almost two 
generations. And I would hope that this moment of unparalleled 
prosperity, with the United States--we wrote of a third of the world 
``languishing under the banalities of Socialist realism,'' all that 
gone, and could we not relax a little bit and do what the chairman and 
able committee wishes done and get on with the other matters of State. 
The arts will be there whether we wish them or not and, in the main, I 
think we do wish that they will be.
  Mr. President, I thank the Chair, I thank my colleagues for their 
courtesy. May I ask unanimous consent, sir, that the text of Secretary 
Goldberg's decision on the arts be printed in the Record at this point.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Dec. 15, 1961]

  Text of Goldberg's Statement Urging U.S. Support for Performing Arts

       Washington, Dec. 14.--Following is the text of Secretary of 
     Labor Arthur J. Goldberg's statement on ``The State of the 
     Performing Arts,'' which was included in his findings in the 
     Metropolitan Opera dispute:
       The financial crisis of the Metropolitan Opera, which 
     raised the prospect that the 1961-62 season might not take 
     place, may prove to have been an event of larger significance 
     in this history of American culture.
       In an age when we must accustom ourselves to a welter of 
     untoward and unwelcome events, there are yet some things that 
     are unthinkable. It was unthinkable that the Metropolitan 
     Opera season should not take

[[Page S9320]]

     place. Yet suddenly that very prospect faced us. Few events 
     could have produced so instant a national awareness that an 
     artistic calamity of the first order was in the offing. The 
     insistent, repeated warning of artists, critics and 
     benefactors as to the financial crisis of the performing arts 
     in America were confirmed in the most dramatic possible way.
       It is worth emphasizing that this situation was confirmed 
     rather than discovered. The problem has been well known to 
     and thoroughly expounded by any number of persons in 
     responsible positions in cultural affairs. This, happily, is 
     a positive factor in the present situation.
       We are fortunate in having the present crisis brought 
     vividly to the national attention without any actual loss--
     the Metropolitan Opera season is taking place. We are doubly 
     fortunate that, confronted with the need to act, we have at 
     hand an abundance of thoughtful, constructive proposals for 
     action. This is perhaps notably true in Congress where 
     legislators such as Senators William Fulbright and Jacob K. 
     Javits, and Representatives Frank Thompson Jr., of New Jersey 
     and John Lindsay of New York have devoted a great deal of 
     attention to this important public issue.


                            PROBLEM OUTLINED

       It is not necessary to review the full range of information 
     which is available on the financial condition of the 
     performing arts, nor to recapitulate the many valuable 
     proposals that have been put forth to improve that situation.
       One central fact, however, is worth emphasizing. The 
     problems of the performing arts in America today are not the 
     problems of decline. They are the problems of growth: A 
     growth so rapid, so tumultuous, so eventful as to be almost 
     universally described as an explosion. The specifics have no 
     parallel in history.
       America today has some 5,000 community theatres--more 
     theatres than radio and television stations. There are better 
     than 500 opera-producing groups--seven times as many as 
     fifteen years ago. Symphony orchestras now total 1,100--twice 
     as many as only ten years ago, and fifty in the suburbs of 
     Los Angeles alone.
       Resources such as these for the consumption of artistic 
     creation do not of themselves insure creativity, but one 
     could hardly hope for a climate more receptive to the 
     creative artist. An era of unequaled achievement may well be 
     upon us.


                         LONDON STATEMENT NOTED

       Recently the times Literary Supplement observed from 
     England, ``If neither a Bach nor a Michelangelo has as yet 
     appeared in Detroit, a splendid mass of evidence has been 
     assembled to point the way. Not only is the talent visible in 
     ever-increasing quantity but the facilities for using it 
     exist as nowhere else.''
       The American artistic scene today is alive and vibrant. At 
     the same time, some of the foremost institutions of American 
     culture are in grave difficulty. The Metropolitan Opera is 
     not alone, Other opera companies, and a number of our leading 
     symphonies, share in a substantially similar financial 
     plight. The artists, moreover, are generally underpaid. The 
     details may differ, but the general condition is the same. 
     The problem, of course, is money. The individual benefactors 
     and patrons just aren't there, as they once were. Just as 
     importantly, as we become more and more a cultural democracy, 
     it becomes less and less appropriate for our major cultural 
     institutions to depend on the generosity of a very few of the 
     very wealthy. That is a time that has passed, and the fact is 
     evident.


                             HOW TO SAVE IT

       The question before the nation, then, is how to restore the 
     financial viability of these institutions and to promote the 
     welfare of the artists upon whom these institutions in the 
     final analysis do and must depend.
       It is, to repeat, unthinkable that they should disappear at 
     the very moment when they have achieved an unprecedented 
     significance to the American people as a whole. They are a 
     heritage of the past. They are equally an earnest for the 
     future: they stand as our expectation of the quality of the 
     American creative artists whose works they will perform.
       The answer to this question is evident enough. We must come 
     to accept the arts as a new community responsibility. The 
     arts must assume their place alongside the already accepted 
     responsibilities for health, education and welfare. Part of 
     this new responsibility must fall to the Federal Government, 
     for precisely the reasons that the nation has given it a role 
     in similar undertakings.
       The issue of Federal support for the arts immediately 
     raises problems. Many persons oppose Federal support on 
     grounds that it will inevitably lead to political 
     interference. This is by no means an argument to be 
     dismissed, and the persons who make it are to be honored for 
     their concern for the freedom of artistic expression. In an 
     age in which a third of the globe languishes under the 
     pathetic banalities of ``Socialist realism,'' let no one 
     suppose that political control of the arts cannot be 
     achieved.


                         respect for integrity

       The overwhelming evidence, however, is that the free 
     American society has shown a deep respect for the artistic 
     integrity of the artist. Every attempt to interfere with that 
     freedom has been met with vigorous opposition, not least from 
     the artistic community. Artists are as susceptible to 
     pressure as the next person, but for every artist who 
     capitulates there is another to take his place from the 
     unruly band which Russell Lynes has described as ``the 
     uncaptured, the disrespectful, and the uncomfortable 
     searchers after truth.''
       The answer to the danger of political interference, then, 
     is not to deny that it exists, but rather to be prepared to 
     resist it. A vigorous, thriving artistic community, close to 
     and supported by a large portion of the public, need not fear 
     attempts at interference. Let our writers and composers and 
     performers give as good as they get. Indeed, when have they 
     done otherwise? The situation is no different from that of 
     academic freedom in our colleges and universities: it is by 
     defending their rights that our faculties strengthen them. 
     This is ever the condition of freedom.
       This is not an area in which we are without experience or 
     precedent. For many years the arts have received support from 
     public funds in many different forms. Much experience 
     supports the general proposition that public support is most 
     successful when it represents only a portion of the total 
     funds involved. The principle of matching grants has clearly 
     proved its validity, and should be the basic principle of any 
     Federal participation in support of the arts. The variations 
     of this arrangement are many, and perhaps as a general rule 
     it may be said that the more levels of government, 
     institutions and individuals involved, the more likely it is 
     that the artists themselves will retain control over their 
     work.


                          6-point partnership

       The principle of diversity of support for the arts should 
     accompany the principle of community responsibility. Our 
     objective should be the establishment of a six-point 
     partnership that will provide a stable, continuing basis of 
     financial support for an artistic community that will at once 
     be responsive to the needs and wishes of the public and at 
     the same time free to pursue its own creative interests
     I
       The principal source of financial support for the arts must 
     come, in the future as in the present, from the public. Art 
     is consumed in many forms, by a vast and widely diverse 
     audience. The essence of a democratic culture is that the 
     artistic community should have a large audience, drawn from 
     all areas of the society, which returns value for value in a 
     direct and equal relationship.
       While, if anything, greater provision should be made for 
     special children's concerts and below-cost performances for 
     special groups, the general musical and theatrical public 
     must expect to provide a greater portion of the costs of the 
     performing arts, through devices such as season subscriptions 
     and special associations for the support of particular 
     activities.
     II
       The patrons and benefactors of the arts have a continuing 
     and vital role to play. It is inevitable that in an age or 
     esthetic creativity the interests and tastes of many of the 
     best artists will run ahead of, or even counter to, the 
     general standards of the time. Here the support of the 
     enlightened patron can have the most profound and fruitful 
     consequences.
       Similarly, there are many artistic forms of the past, of 
     which opera is but one; which are simply too expensive to be 
     supported entirely by ticket sales or general purchases. In 
     such instances the support of art patrons makes it possible 
     to preserve for the present and future many of the most 
     profound creative achievements of the past.
     III
       Private corporations must increasingly expand their support 
     of community activities to include support for the arts. One 
     of the hallmarks of American free enterprise is the 
     remarkable extent to which business has voluntarily 
     contributed to educational, charitable and health activities 
     in localities throughout the nation.
       In line with the wider recognition of community 
     responsibility for the arts, business corporations would do 
     well to consider allocating, as a matter of course, a portion 
     of their total contributions to these activities. The Texaco-
     sponsored broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, the 
     television dramas sponsored by the Westinghouse Corporation 
     and the makers of Hallmark Cards, and the institutional 
     advertisements of the Container Corporation of America, using 
     modern art, are good illustrations of another and important 
     form of support which business corporations can give to the 
     arts.
     IV
       The American labor movement has a responsibility for 
     support of the arts similar to that of American business. 
     This has been recognized to some degree, as in the 
     contributions several unions have made to support children's 
     and other special concerts, but on the whole the community 
     contributions of American trade unions have been directed for 
     activities similar to those which have attracted business 
     support. A parallel adjustment is in order.
     V
       Local governments, and to a lesser extent, state 
     governments are already providing a considerable measure of 
     support for the arts,

[[Page S9321]]

     in line with the clearly manifested interest of the American 
     people in expanding the artistic resources available to the 
     general public.
       The support of art museums is already a general practice. 
     Everyone accepts the fact that it is appropriate for a state 
     or local government to provide housing and custodial support 
     to such museums. The question naturally arises why this 
     support should not be provided for our operas and symphonies 
     as well. Of course, the main source of public support for the 
     arts should continue to arise from the spontaneous, direct 
     desire of local and state governments to provide for the 
     needs of their own communities. This is an ancient tradition 
     in the arts, one on which we might draw more extensively.
       For example, the practice of universities of making 
     provisions for artists-in-residence might profitably be 
     adopted by municipalities--one recalls that Bach for the last 
     quarter century of his life was the Municipal Cantor of 
     Leipzig.
     VI
       The Federal Government has from its beginning provided a 
     measure of support for the arts, and there can be little 
     question that this support must now be increased. This can 
     and should be done in a variety of ways.
       The Federal Government may be a direct consumer of the 
     arts, by commissioning sculpture, painting, and awarding 
     musical scholarships.
       One of the most important, and perhaps most proper role of 
     the Federal Government is to help state and local governments 
     and private nonprofit groups build and maintain the physical 
     plants required by the arts. Theaters, concert halls, 
     galleries are the precondition of many of the arts. Public 
     support at all levels of government in the area of helping 
     provide and maintain art facilities poses the minimum danger 
     of Government interference with the arts themselves. A 
     splendid example of such cooperation is the Lincoln Center 
     for the Performing Arts, where city, state and Federal funds 
     are all being combined to provide a magnificent cultural 
     center in New York.
       The concentration of public support upon providing physical 
     facilities for the arts should not preclude programs of 
     direct Federal subsidy for theatrical and musical 
     performances and similar activities. However, Federal 
     subsidies of this kind should be granted on a matching basis, 
     with much the larger proportion of funds provided by private 
     sources, or by other levels of government.


                            larger duty seen

       The Government has a larger responsibility toward the arts 
     than simply to help support them. President Kennedy observed 
     not long ago that the Federal Government ``cannot order that 
     culture exists, but the Government can and should provide the 
     climate of freedom, deeper and wider education, and the 
     intellectual curiosity in which culture flourishes.''
       Our concern with the condition of the arts in America must 
     ultimately and principally take the form of concern for the 
     position of the artists. Our principal interest is that the 
     American artist should remain a free man. Without freedom 
     there is no art or life worth having. That there are more 
     comfortable conditions than freedom has no bearing on the 
     central fact.
       However, we may also legitimately concern ourselves with 
     the status of the artist in our society. An artist may be 
     well fed and free at the same time. That an artist is 
     honored and recognized need not mean he is any the less 
     independent. America has a long way to go before our 
     musicians, performers and creative artists are accorded 
     and creative artists are accorded the dignity and honor to 
     which their contribution to American life entitles them.
       The President and Mrs. Kennedy have greatly advanced this 
     cause by the inclusion of artist and writers such as Pablo 
     Casals and Robert Frost in a number of the most solemn as 
     well as the more festive occasions of state. The proposal of 
     the President to consider the establishment of a national 
     honors system clearly presents an important area in which 
     Artistic achievement can be further recognized by the nation.


                        advisory council sought

       The most important immediate step which the Federal 
     Government may take is the establishment of a Federal 
     advisory council on the arts. Such a measure has been 
     introduced by Representative Frank Thompson Jr. and others, 
     and is now before the Congress.
       The functions of such a council would be fourfold:
       (1) Recommend ways to maintain and increase the cultural 
     resources of the United States.
       (2) Propose methods to encourage private initiative in the 
     arts;
       (3) Cooperate with local, state, and Federal departments 
     and agencies to foster artistic and cultural endeavors and 
     the use of the arts both nationally and internationally in 
     the best interest of our country, and
       (4) Strive to stimulate greater appreciation of the arts 
     within the councils of Government.
       If it were composed in large part of working artists and 
     artistic directors, it could have important influence on 
     Government policies which have a direct bearing on the 
     resources available for support of the arts. A number of 
     proposals which have come to my attention are perhaps worth 
     noting as instances of a very considerable body of ideas that 
     are worthy of consideration.


                            taxes discussed

       Mr. John D. Rockefeller 3d, has pointed out that under 
     present Federal income tax law, a deduction for charitable 
     contributions by an individual is limited to 20 per cent of 
     his adjusted income, or in the case of gifts to churches, 
     operating schools and colleges, and certain types of 
     hospitals and medical research organizations, the limitation 
     is 30 per cent instead of 20 per cent.
       Congressman Keogh of New York has introduced legislation 
     which would extend this added 10 per cent to include 
     libraries and museums of history, art or science.
       Senator Javits has proposed to add symphony orchestras or 
     operas to this list.
       Mr. Rockefeller has suggested it be further extended to 
     include ballet, repertory drama and community arts centers. 
     While it is not possible to forecast with any precision just 
     how much extra support would be forthcoming as a result of 
     such a measure, it is obviously a matter worthy of the 
     attention of an advisory council on the arts.
       Another tax matter which merits careful consideration is 
     the problem of artists generally, and performing artists in 
     particular, whose earnings are frequently concentrated in a 
     comparatively short period of years, with the result that 
     they are taxed at a much heavier rate than if their earnings 
     were spread over a normal life employment span.
       This is a hardship to the artists, it is also a burden to 
     the managers of theatrical and musical enterprises, who 
     frequently are required to make up some of the difference by 
     paying stars higher salaries than would be required if their 
     tax payments were lower.
       Recently forty nations met in Rome to negotiate an 
     international convention for the protection of performers, 
     producers of phonograms and broadcasting organizations. Parts 
     of this convention concern the protection of performing 
     rights, which correspond for performing artists to the 
     copyright protection now enjoyed by authors. These rights do 
     not exist for performers under United States law. It would 
     seem quite in order for this subject to be given careful 
     consideration.


                         royalty proposal given

       Mr. Robert Dowling has recently brought up to date a 
     proposal introduced in Congress in 1958 by Senator Fulbright 
     which would make it possible for the Federal Government to 
     collect royalties on music which is now in the public domain, 
     or becomes so in the future.
       Senator Fulbright's bill provided that ``all music now or 
     hereafter in the public domain shall be the property of the 
     United States as copyright owner, and be used by it for the 
     benefit of the public.''
       Although this is a new concept in the United States, the 
     arrangement has been followed for years in other countries, 
     notably France. Senator Fulbright proposed that an 
     administrative body be established which would be authorized 
     to administer the licensing of such music, utilizing the 
     proceeds for the support of the arts, much in the manner of a 
     private foundation devoted to this work.
       The sums involved in such an arrangement, while not 
     enormous, are nonetheless considerable. Mr. Dowling has 
     estimated that the total potential income from royalties on 
     music in the public domain, calculated on the same percentage 
     basis as copyrighted material would be $6,520,000 annually, 
     distributed as follows:

Popular music (records)......................................$1,100,000
Sheet music (classical).......................................3,420,000
Classical music (records).....................................2,000,000

       At this period when the entire body of copyright law is 
     under study, it would seem appropriate to give further 
     attention to this attractive proposal for supporting the 
     arts.
       I commend these observations on the state of the arts to 
     the earnest consideration of an advisory council on the arts, 
     when constituted, to the Administration, the Congress, state 
     and local governments and the public.


                               conclusion

       In concluding this award it would not, I feel, be 
     inappropriate to make special note of the needs of the 
     Metropolitan Opera itself. For years this grand institution 
     had had the unfailing support of a great and varied number of 
     New Yorkers and persons from all parts of the country.
       The generosity--the magnanimity--of such splendid 
     benefactors as Mrs. August Belmont and Mrs. Lewis W. Douglas 
     is matched only by the devotion of the everyday opera lovers 
     who fill and overflow the galleries. Try as, everyone does, 
     the deficit is always there, and somehow ever more difficult 
     to meet.
       An outpouring of support for this great cultural resource 
     would be an inspiring affirmation of the public interest in 
     the preservation and encouragement of cultural activities 
     throughout the nation. It would be an altogether appropriate, 
     and most influential, beginning of an era of widely based and 
     sustained support for the arts in America.
       In his message of greetings and good wishes on the occasion 
     of the opening of the 1961-62 Metropolitan Opera season in 
     October, the President said: ``The entire nation rejoices 
     that this distinguished cultural asset in our national life 
     will again be bringing the splendid performances of great 
     artists to millions of American homes. For the music of the 
     Metropolitan reaches far beyond the hearing of those gathered 
     in this great hall. It endures, captured and held by human 
     memory, a pleasure and inspiration for years.''

[[Page S9322]]

       For myself, I would wish to thank all those of both parties 
     who have helped me with courtesy and assistance, and who have 
     suffered this entire undertaking with a deep and fully mutual 
     devotion to the art of the opera. I am fully confident that 
     relations between the orchestra and the opera association can 
     reach the level of confidence and cooperation that this 
     shared devotion entirely warrants.
       The difficulties of the present have proved the needed 
     stimulus for a large and promising future. We look to the Met 
     with high expectations for ever greater achievement in the 
     musical arts.

  Mr. JEFFORDS. First of all, Mr. President, I want to thank the 
Senator from New York, the ranking member of the Finance Committee, for 
his excellent presentation on the history of the Endowment. I think it 
is important that we dwell on that a while, or just a few minutes here 
anyway, because we have heard some rather severe condemnations of a 
program of which, in the final analysis, after review, would show has 
been very helpful in enhancing the availability of the arts in this 
Nation. I find it problematic that even though we seem to have 
eliminated all of the policies that have caused problems as part of the 
1996 appropriations act, to some, they still seem to exist. Let me talk 
a little bit about that, after again, thanking the Senator most 
sincerely for that historical presentation, which was most helpful.
  Back in 1996, when we passed the appropriations legislation, we 
placed prohibitions on policies that have caused difficulty with the 
Senator of North Carolina and others, on the utilization of funds from 
the Endowment. First, we placed a prohibition on subgranting. Now, 
subgranting was a practice in which the Endowment itself would give a 
grant to an institution and that institution would in turn make grants 
for other things or to individual performances. An example of such a 
practice was raised with regard to a program mentioned by the Senator 
from North Carolina with respect to the Whitney Museum. It is 
illustrative because it points out how far we would have to go in order 
to satisfy those who are concerned about painting the Endowment out to 
be making inappropriate grants--some time, some place, somewhere, some 
performance will be what someone might call pornographic. Most often, 
it is that subgrant or another activity, separately funded, which was 
not issued by the Endowment, like the example of a performance at the 
Whitney Museum. The Whitney Museum did get a grant for its building, 
but not for the performance that the Senator from North Carolina 
mentioned. Now, the Senator from North Carolina would say that because 
a performance was done in that building, which had received a grant for 
its construction, it should have been prevented because it, in his 
determination, would have been offensive. That is an unrealistic 
standard and I would hate to think that of the programs that we fund in 
the United States, that we would go to the extent of censoring what 
people there participated in or what happens in our places of 
enjoyment, museums, or any place else.
  Another thing we did to prevent some of the types of programming 
which had become offensive was to prevent seasonal support. 
Institutions must now specify what specific projects they will support 
with the funds they receive from the Endowment. And also, even more 
important from the perspective of trying to prevent the kinds of 
performances which the Senator from North Carolina was pointing out, 
was to prevent grants to individuals.
  In the House when the issue of some of these grants was raised, Jane 
Alexander, the Chairman of the NEA--and I will make this a part of the 
Record--pointed out in the House definitively that they were not grants 
made by the NEA. Still, those are the ones that are used to condemn the 
NEA.
  I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the letter from Jane Alexander 
to Representatives in the House be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                              National Endowment for the Arts,

                                    Washington, DC, June 24, 1997.
       Dear Representative: In recent days you may have received a 
     videotape produced and distributed by the American Family 
     Association (AFA) which contains film scenes that the AFA 
     says were supported by the National Endowment for the Arts 
     during my administration of the agency.
       The video apparently contains scenes from five specifically 
     named films. I want you to know that the NEA did not in any 
     way pay for the production of three of the films entitled 
     Access Denied, Coconut/Cane & Cutlass and Bloodsisters. The 
     fourth film entitled Nitrate Kisses was supported by means of 
     an NEA production grant to an individual filmmaker during the 
     previous administration before I became Chairman.
       NEA did support production during my chairmanship of the 
     fifth film, The Watermelon Woman, by means of a grant to 
     Woman Make Movies/Cheryl Dunye in 1995. For your information, 
     The Watermelon Woman has been reviewed very favorably, and is 
     showing to audiences in theaters and film festivals 
     throughout the country.
       You should know that the NEA has not made any grants to 
     individual filmmakers since 1996, because grants to most 
     individual artists were abolished by Congress that year. We 
     also have not supported the general distribution of films 
     since 1996, because those grants fall into the category of 
     general seasonal operating support, which Congress also 
     abolished in 1996.
       The AFA also criticized the agency for supporting Fiction 
     Collective 2 (FC-2), a small publisher at the University of 
     Illinois, which has introduced some of our newest minority 
     writers of quality to the American public. Over the years, 
     FC-2 has sustained a commitment to intellectual challenge, 
     and some of America's greatest writers have supported it.
       As you may know, the AFA has a long record of distributing 
     purposefully inaccurate information about the NEA. The fact 
     remains that this agency has made more than 112,000 grants 
     over the course of its thirty-two year history, and fewer 
     than forty of them have caused some people some problems. 
     That's a record of excellence that any private business or 
     government agency would envy.
       I hope you find this information helpful, and hope that I 
     can count on your support.
       Sincerely;
                                         Jane Alexander, Chairman.

  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I want to point out that we should not 
get off track of what the Senator from New York has attempted to do, 
and that is to remember why the Endowment was created and what is the 
importance of the arts, what is the importance of the Federal support 
for the arts.
  We have a huge Nation, a wonderful Nation, and a nation with diverse 
cultures with wonderful things occurring from one coast to the other, 
from the North to the South. The arts help us understand life and the 
NEA help the Nation learn about the good things that are going on in 
the arts across the country--the good things that will help us 
understand where we are going, what our society is about, and what we 
need to do to be happy, to have a good life, and to be able to solve 
our problems.
  The purpose of the Endowment is to allow those areas--those things 
that are successful, those things that appeal to us, that make our 
culture rich--our art--to be shared from State to State. The Federal 
role encourages this exchange and supports all States by collecting, 
disseminating, and allowing programs to tour all around the country, 
making sure that programs which are important and essential to 
education or to assist those in depressed areas that are impoverished 
are shared.
  So I will be offering an amendment which will say that at this time 
in our Nation we recognize that we have two very serious problems, and 
they are very closely related:
  Education. We know that we must improve education in our Nation. It 
is essential that we do that. It is essential because in this day and 
age competition from international economies has created real problems 
for us, with jobs in the thousands leaving this country and going to 
others, threatening our Nation's ability to compete right now. For 
instance, we have 190,000 jobs in the technology area that are going 
unfilled because we do not have the young people or older people with 
the skills necessary to perform those jobs. We had one CEO who 
testified before the Labor Committee who said that he had seriously 
considered, like others are moving centers of their manufacturing from 
this Nation to other nations because people there have the skills, they 
are ready, they are available, and the cost is cheaper.
  So one of the purposes and an important function of the Endowment is 
to try to see how we can help solve that problem of education.
  In addition to that, we also have the problem of welfare reform. Some 
of the greatest problems this Nation faces are in the inner cities with 
our poor, with violence, and with the incredible problems that people 
face trying to find direction and meaning in their lives.

[[Page S9323]]

 What can you do? How can you escape from the pressures that you have 
in the ghettos?
  I have traveled around this Nation and have observed education and 
welfare programs. Many of these are programs were enhanced by programs 
put on or financed in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Let 
me give you a few of those to demonstrate what I mean.
  The thing I would like to talk about first is education; and 
learning. It is so much easier to understand and to learn if what you 
are doing is relevant, or in some way relevant, to your life, making it 
a little bit better, or giving you a way to make it a little bit 
better.
  Let me go through some of the programs that I have witnessed. These 
were funded by the Endowment, or assisted by the Endowment. Let me take 
you to the inner city of New York City in the Hispanic area where some 
of the highest crime rates and some of the highest poverty rates exist.
  I visited Ballet Hispanico on a weekend morning where young kids of 
5, 6, 7, or 8 years old received instruction in ballet, participating 
with all the enthusiasm that young kids can have, knowing that when 
they left there they were going to have just a little bit more hope. 
This program provided a way that they could see a window through all of 
the chaos that they live in to be able to take them to a better life.

  A more dramatic exhibition of that, also in New York City was a 
program that I visited--again, a program which was supported by the 
Endowment--where I saw these young children all drawing kind of 
frantically on the papers that were in front of them. I asked, ``What 
is going on here?'' The teacher informed me that each one of those 
children had lost a member of their family, by violence, that they had 
blocked off reality, and they could not communicate about what happened 
to them. But by drawing and by artistic expression they could let their 
feelings out, they could break through, there was hope for those 
children that their life could break away from this poverty and 
violence which they were in.
  Also, one only has to go to listen to the Harlem Boys Choir or so 
many other demonstrations of what has gone on with the individuals who 
have participated in NEA funded activities. I also went out to San 
Diego, CA, and went to a school out there which was an incredible one, 
a music magnet school, but again in one of the depressed areas of San 
Diego. This was a middle school of seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, 
where they had an orchestra, a band, a jazz band. Almost everyone in 
that school had arrived there in the seventh grade without any skills 
in music. When I listened to them play, it brought tears to my eyes. To 
think that these young people when they came to that school did not see 
a purpose in life but perhaps now saw that there could be some beauty 
in their lives. I could go right here to Washington, DC. In Washington, 
DC, we have a school that is under the tutelage of the Kennedy Center. 
I was amazed with that one. I found they had artists there who were 
teaching, but they weren't teaching art. They were teaching math, and 
they were teaching science. How were they doing that? I went, and I 
watched these young kids making little pianos. They were learning how 
to measure them, construct them, and learning their geometry. Then they 
learned how the sounds came out differently from the little thing they 
hit it with. They could make music. They understood why the frequencies 
were different and why the frequencies were made different by the 
lengths of those strings.
  What happened to those students? The math rates went up in that 
school--not so much for the reading scores, but the math rate went 
climbing upward.
  So we know that using the arts, there are ways in which we can break 
through to things which are interesting and relevant--music as well as 
the performing arts and the graphic arts.
  So we have a way to realize improvement here. So that is why my 
amendment would say that what we need in this country is to identify 
each of these programs all throughout the country and to let other 
people know in other States what programs are working, what are the 
ones that break through to those young kids who had suffered from 
violence and loss in their families. Which ones broke through to help? 
Is there further evidence of how this could work?
  Statistics based on College Board figures, the organization that 
performs the SATs, show a difference between those students who 
participated in music and the arts as compared with students who did 
not. They found there was a dramatic difference. With those who had 4 
or more years in music or art, verbal SAT scores went up almost 60 
points and math SAT scores went up over 40 points. To a young person 
who is hoping to break out of poverty, to not get caught on welfare, 
the thought that by participating in music and art, the window of 
opportunity could be enlarged and the doors of college or university 
could be opened wide to them gives you an idea of what can happen if we 
structure the NEA better so that it identifies, helps fund and allows 
us to share throughout this broad Nation of ours those successful 
programs.
  I have done a rough analysis and summary of just a few of the 
successful kinds of programs that we have like this in this country. 
They are very different. Some use the arts secondarily. Some in 
different ways teach math or science. Roughly 1 percent of our schools 
are good; 1 percent are doing the job; 1 percent of our students are 
getting that kind of education that we need. Ninety-nine percent need 
to learn from somebody, somewhere, or somehow how they can improve 
their results. The way they can do it is by being able to know where 
those programs are, who has them, so that they can identify and look at 
them and replicate them.

  I think the Endowment, by helping identify, perhaps in cooperation 
and coordination with the States and the Department of Education, can 
make those programs available for others to see and to utilize.
  One of the advantages of this great Nation is that we have people who 
are innovative, who can design and find ways to solve these problems. 
The disadvantage we have over foreign nations is that of replication, 
getting the people who are in charge of the programs, who are trying to 
design these things well to become aware of successful programs that 
already exist.
  Let me give you an example of how we differ from other nations, and 
we have to analyze it as to whether we should be looking at this 
problem and see if we can correct it. I think we should. We have a 
program in the area of work force improvement called TECH PREP. It is 
in combination with the secondary schools and junior colleges or 
community colleges, and how they can work together and bring some of 
the courses down into the high school and to pull the students up to 
the level where when they graduate they will have the ability to get 
those jobs that I was talking about those
$30-, $40-, $50-an-hour jobs paying $100,000 or $90,000 that are 
available in this Nation.
  Malaysia came over and took one look at our program, TECH PREP, and 
said this is a great idea. Look how well it is working. They went back 
and overnight Malaysia adopted our TECH PREP program. We are still at 1 
percent. About 1 percent of the schools in this country have the TECH 
PREP linkage with other higher educational institutions.
  Those are just examples of why it is necessary for us to have 
programs and methodology to be able to share those great things which 
are occurring throughout the Nation so that they can be available to 
all. Those things will not be readily located or identified or provided 
unless we have some way to collect, to identify, to evaluate, and to 
let others know about them. I believe the Endowment could help us 
immeasurably in that area.
  Mr. President, I have gone on longer than I wanted to. I suppose I 
will be back tomorrow when we take this up. I hope that my colleagues 
will share some other examples of NEA-funded programs that demonstrate 
the advantage of a Federal system which tries to enhance the arts and 
our culture, enhances enrichment and educational activities as well as 
to show what positive results can be achieved by giving young people, 
at an early age, an interest in learning. The NEA has been successful 
in these areas.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I want to make some comments about funding

[[Page S9324]]

the arts, and I rise in strong support of the amendment offered earlier 
today by my friend and colleague from Arkansas, Mr. Hutchinson. I 
commend him for taking such an active role in the issue. It is an issue 
that people have very strong and very divergent feelings about. It is 
that divergence of opinion that brings me to the floor to support this 
amendment.
  In the House, it is my understanding that there is a majority in 
favor of eliminating funding. We will be voting on that, too. Senator 
Hutchinson is offering an alternative. He has done a lot of research on 
funding equity to meet the purpose of arts, of getting it out as 
divergent as possible across the United States, and we have not been 
doing that with equity.
  During the course of this debate we have heard example after example 
of successful and valuable local projects. We hear about Shakespeare in 
the Park and we hear about traveling museums, we hear about folk 
festivals and chamber music, and visiting artists. These are very 
worthwhile programs, and they yank at the rural heartstrings of both 
liberals and conservatives alike, but the survival of those activities 
is not the subject of this amendment. In fact, this amendment would 
strengthen those programs.
  The variety of approaches today alone for funding the arts shows that 
what we are doing has some major flaws, and there is a saying that if 
you keep on doing what you have always been doing, you are going to 
wind up with what you have, or less.
  Everyone in this Chamber is familiar with the past trouble 
surrounding funding for the national endowments. There are too many 
examples of poor judgment in the granting process, too many examples of 
taxpayers' money wasted on projects with absolutely no redeeming social 
or cultural value. There are also those who argue that art is 
subjective, that Congress should refrain from limiting expenditures in 
order to foster freedom of expression.
  This is not a debate about censorship. It is a debate about spending 
the people's money. It is a debate about who gets to make the 
decisions. It is a debate about who can most encourage art 
participation and who should make those decisions.
  Is there any reason why national panels are more qualified to fund 
art than State or local panels? If the strongest justification for 
continued arts funding is the value of local programs, then we should 
recognize that and strengthen what works, eliminating what does not.
  Last week the Senate took a historic step in the right direction when 
we voted to return K through 12 education spending decisions to the 
local school boards. That vote indicates a frustration we all feel with 
the abrogation of local decisionmaking authority, with the dissolution 
of American democracy. Programming decisions, on programs such as 
education and the arts, must be subject to local sensitivities and 
needs. Federal bureaucrats have no accountability to people because 
nobody lives at the Federal level. People live at the local level, 
people learn at the local level, and people appreciate and produce art 
at the local level. Even the Smithsonian, National Gallery, and the 
Kennedy Center produce and display collections of local art. So if we 
are going to fund our cultural resources with taxpayers' dollars, then 
let us give the taxpayers the opportunity and the responsibility to do 
it right.
  In my hometown of Gillette, for example, where I served as mayor for 
8 years, we are particularly fond of Camplex--the Campbell County Arts 
and Activities Center. Representatives from all over northeastern 
Wyoming take advantage of the performances and exhibits offered at 
Camplex, and many of those productions are made possible using Wyoming 
Arts Council support to leverage additional matching funds from local, 
State, and national sources. In fact, they leverage the resource about 
10 to 1. That is local participation, local approval, and local 
decisionmaking.
  I understand the importance of arts and humanities funding in places 
like Wyoming. I know about the distances between small towns that would 
never get to participate in the arts if it were not for some funding 
that helps to get it to them over those distances.

  Seeing the arts encourages the talent that lives there. It brings out 
the talent of the kids, and we do have some very talented kids. Every 
Senator in this Chamber could point to some successes in their States. 
There is some misconception out there that conservatives do not 
appreciate the value of the arts and humanities in our society, but 
that is not an accurate view. This conservative Senator believes there 
is a place for arts funding, but that place is not in Washington. This 
is about an equal chance throughout the United States for equal funding 
in the arts.
  I congratulate the Senator from Arkansas for his middle of the road 
approach, and I yield the floor.
  Mr. BROWNBACK addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Helms 
amendment to the Interior appropriations bill. The Helms amendment, 
which abolishes the National Endowment for the Arts, is the only 
fiscally responsible approach to the funding of the arts by the Federal 
Government.
  The Federal Government truly has to be downsized and more limited. 
Some on the Senate floor today have argued, and rightfully so, that the 
National Endowment for the Arts would function much better as a private 
endowment funded with private dollars, and I agree. We cannot let the 
Federal Government continue growing unabated, swallowing up the private 
function of our society as it grows. We have been given stewardship 
over the public purse, and we cannot abdicate that responsibility just 
to placate some of the special interests in Washington. We cannot 
continue wasting taxpayer dollars on the National Endowment for the 
Arts.
  NEA funding in this appropriations bill is over $100 million. I 
support the arts, but the simple truth is our Federal Government is 
broke. We simply cannot afford to keep on funding art when we are in 
this type of fiscal condition and when we have other programs that do 
struggle which we should be funding.
  Before we vote on this issue, I simply ask my colleagues to consider 
a simple question. If your family was broke, if they were in a tough 
financial circumstances, if they were looking at an enormous mortgage 
on their house, enormous debt that they have, would they be out buying 
art? The simple answer to that is no, they would not.
  We are in a similar situation here. We are still struggling to get 
the budget balanced, and we are going to get there. But once we balance 
it, we are still over $5 trillion in debt. That is how big the mortgage 
is on the country.
  We are talking about a program that I just do not think can justify 
itself, given the financial conditions that we are in and given the 
role of a limited and focused Government. I do think we ought to 
support the arts, and that should be done privately. That can occur and 
should occur. But when we are in this type of fiscal condition, funding 
art is clearly not an essential. Subsidizing artistic endeavors, 
inspiring artists is a worthwhile project but not for the Federal 
Government. The House has seen the wisdom to abolish this Government 
program. We should have the wisdom to do the same.
  In considering this amendment, there are a lot of things that it 
seems to me the Federal Government could do without--a smaller, better 
focused Federal Government, a more limited Federal Government--and have 
a better Federal Government at the end of the day. Here is one clear 
example. It is one we do not need. It is one we have had extended 
debate about. It is not as if this is a new topic coming up. It is time 
to do it, and that is why I am supporting this amendment.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


Excepted Committee Amendment Beginning on Page 96, line 12 through Page 
                               97, line 8

  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate

[[Page S9325]]

proceed now to the committee amendment on page 96.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

                    National Endowment for the Arts


                       grants and administration

       For necessary expenses to carry out the National Foundation 
     on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965, as amended, 
     $83,300,000 shall be available to the National Endowment for 
     the Arts for the support of projects and productions in the 
     arts through assistance to organizations and individuals 
     pursuant to section 5(c) of the Act, and for administering 
     the functions of the Act, to remain available until expended.


                            matching grants

       To carry out the provisions of section 10(a)(2) of the 
     National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 
     1965, as amended, $16,760,000, to remain available until 
     expended, to the National Endowment for the Arts: Provided, 
     That this appropriation shall be available for obligation 
     only in such amounts as may be equal to the total amounts of 
     gifts, bequests, and devises of money, and other property 
     accepted by the Chairman or by grantees of the Endowment 
     under the provisions of section 10(a)(2), subsections 
     11(a)(2)(A) and 11(a)(3)(A) during the current and preceding 
     fiscal years for which equal amounts have not previously been 
     appropriated.


                           Amendment No. 1188

(Purpose: To eliminate funding for programs and activities carried out 
                by the National Endowment for the Arts)

  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Missouri [Mr. Ashcroft], for himself, Mr. 
     Brownback, and Mr. Sessions, proposes an amendment numbered 
     1188 to the committee amendment beginning on page 96, line 12 
     through page 97, line 8.

  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       Beginning on page 96, strike line 14 and all that follows 
     through page 97, line 8.

  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Helms from North 
Carolina for having participated and spoken in advance about this 
amendment. This amendment relates to the funding of the National 
Endowment for the Arts. It's a means whereby arts are subsidized by the 
Federal Government, where the citizens of this country are asked to 
participate in funding a variety of things which are designated as art 
or as worthy of being supported by the Government. I appreciate the 
leadership of Senator Helms in this matter. I thank him for his 
outstanding remarks which he has made earlier today.
  On the tomb of English architect Sir Christopher Wren, there is an 
inscription which reads, ``If you would see his monuments, look around 
you.'' Each day I am moved by the beauty of the monuments of this 
historic city, monuments to Washington, to Jefferson, to Lincoln. They 
are emblematic of what is great in the art and architecture history of 
the United States. For years we will stand looking at these monuments 
as testaments to our faith. Further, they serve to remind us of the 
central role that artistic and scholarly expression can and should play 
in our lives.
  It is within this context that we must determine what involvement, if 
any, the Federal Government should have in the arts. It is my belief 
that arts and humanities funding is primarily a matter for private and 
local initiatives. There are, however, some areas that do merit Federal 
assistance. For example, the Smithsonian plays an important part in 
transmitting the cultural heritage of Americans from one generation to 
the next. We appreciate the fact that we can learn about what has 
happened in America by visiting the Smithsonian Institution museums. I 
think they are of great value.
  Conversely, a number of federally funded programs, from, one, for 
instance, labeled ``A Theater History of Women Who Dressed as Men,'' to 
projects representing various manifestations of political correctness, 
are a waste of our taxpayers' resources.
  Begun in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society 
Program, the National Endowment for the Arts was supposed to raise the 
level of artistic excellence and promote a wide variety of art. The 
agency's budget reached a high of $176 million just 5 years ago, in 
1992, and it is slated to receive $99.5 million in fiscal year 1997. 
Although the NEA has funded some worthwhile programs around the Nation, 
it has managed to create an unbroken record of special favors and 
embarrassments. Year after year, the NEA has doled out money to shock 
artists who produce obscene, antifamily, antireligious, so-called 
works. I will not say they are works of art. Nonetheless, President 
Clinton has continued his efforts to secure tax dollars for the NEA, 
requesting $136 million for the agency in his proposed funding for 
fiscal year 1998.
  Since the beginning of my tenure as a U.S. Senator, I have opposed 
Federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. I believe that 
Congress has no constitutional authority or valid role to play in 
funding the NEA. For example, during the 104th Congress, I offered, 
though unsuccessfully, an amendment in the Senate Labor and Human 
Resources Committee to reduce authorization levels for the NEA by 50 
percent.
  On July 15 the House passed legislation eliminating, this year, 
funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. However, on July 22 
our Senate colleagues in the Senate Appropriations Committee took a 
different approach from the House by providing $100.06 million in 
funding for the NEA for fiscal year 1998. This reversed a trend of 
declining amounts from 1992, and sends the dollar amounts back up 
again. I was disappointed by this action. That is why I am here today. 
I am here today to attempt to persuade my colleagues to end funding for 
the National Endowment for the Arts.
  There are numbers of reasons why we should end funding for the 
National Endowment for the Arts. Earlier today, Senator Helms 
eloquently discussed one of those reasons, that the NEA has 
consistently funded art that is antifamily, morally objectionable, and 
obscene. There has been much debate on this point, and this debate, I 
am sure, will continue. I would like now to discuss some of the other 
reasons why we should stop funding the NEA.

  In a time when we are paying the highest taxes in the history of the 
United States, why should we continue funding the National Endowment 
for the Arts? I think our priorities should be to balance the Federal 
budget as quickly as possible and deliver deep across-the-board tax 
relief to the American people. Another public gift to the NEA 
bureaucrats would be a slap in the face of millions of taxpayers who 
deserve tax relief but were told this year we just don't have enough 
resources to be able to accord you the relief you deserve. Frankly, 
that is an inadequate response to individuals while we are funding a 
variety of art projects which qualify on the basis of their political 
correctness; art projects which would undermine the very things that 
parents are trying to teach their children about the values that have 
made this Nation great.
  Second, Congress should not be in the business of making direct 
subsidies to free speech. I really question whether it is the proper 
role of the Federal Government to directly subsidize free speech as we 
do through the National Endowment for the Arts.
  Government subsidies, even with the best of intentions, are dangerous 
because they skew the market. They tend to allocate resources to 
something that would not be or could not be supported on its own. And 
they skew the market toward whatever the Government grantmakers prefer. 
It says that we think a certain kind of art is best and we will pay for 
that kind of art but we won't pay for other kinds of art. It seems to 
me, to have the Federal Government as a giant art critic, trying to say 
that one kind of art is superior to another, one kind of speech is 
superior to another, one set of values is superior to another, is not 
something that a free nation would want to encourage.
  National Endowment for the Arts grants placed the stamp of official 
U.S. Government approval on funded art. This gives the Endowment 
enormous power to dictate what is regarded as art and what is not. 
Frankly, I believe they have made serious mistakes in the past, 
suggesting, of things that were nothing more than offensive, obscene 
material, that they were in fact art.
  The Los Angeles Times critic Jan Breslauer demonstrates that the 
NEA's subsidization of certain viewpoints poses great problems. The Los 
Angeles Times critic writes:


[[Page S9326]]


       [T]he endowment has quietly pursued qualities rooted in 
     identity politics--a kind of separatism that emphasizes 
     racial, sexual and cultural difference above all else. The 
     art world's version of affirmative action, these policies . . 
     . have had a profoundly corrosive effect on the American 
     arts. . . .

  Here is a critic, accustomed to evaluating art, saying that the 
National Endowment for the Arts and its subsidies have had a profoundly 
corrosive effect on the American arts. All too frequently, Government 
programs, even well-intentioned ones, have a reverse effect, an 
unintended consequence, an unanticipated impact. And that is what we 
have here. Critics, understanding, aware, in tune with what is 
happening in the art world, say that what we are doing with $100 
million of taxpayers' money is having a ``profoundly corrosive effect 
on the American arts.''
  Here is how the Los Angeles Times critic says it is happening:

       . . . pigeonholing artists and pressuring them to produce 
     work that satisfies a politically correct agenda rather than 
     their best creative instincts.

  What the critic has really talked about here is that, instead of 
creating to express himself or herself, the artist ends up trying to 
create to express or impress Government.
  When you have a sale of what the communication is and a subsidy that 
reinforces the fact that someone is willing to sell their idea and to 
distort their idea for purposes of selling it, that is nothing more 
than a prostitution of the arts. It changes arts from their purity--
from purity to pandering. It panders after the bureaucracy and has, 
according to this well-known critic, ``a profoundly corrosive effect on 
the American arts.''
  Despite Endowment claims that Federal funding permits underprivileged 
individuals to gain access to the arts, it is important to look at what 
actually happens. The NEA grants offer little more than a subsidy to 
the well-to-do. One-fifth of the direct NEA grants go to multimillion-
dollar arts organizations, $1 out of every $5 goes to the multimillion-
dollar art organizations.
  Harvard University political scientist Edward C. Banfield has noted 
that the ``art public is now, as it has always been, overwhelmingly 
middle and upper middle class and above average in income--relatively 
prosperous people who would probably enjoy art about as much in the 
absence of the subsidies.'' The poor and the middle class thus benefit 
less from public art subsidies than do the museum- and symphony-going 
upper middle class.
  Economist David Sawers of Great Britain argues that ``those who 
finance the subsidies through taxes are likely to be different from and 
poorer than those who benefit from the subsidies.'' In fact, the $99.5 
million that funds the NEA also represents the entire annual tax burden 
for over 436,000 working-class American families. To say to nearly half 
a million American families, everything you have as an annual tax 
burden will be taken and spent to subsidize art, or so-called art, or 
politically correct expression which has been distorted by the 
bureaucrats that have demanded that things be politically correct, is 
an affront to hard-working American families. I think we either ought 
to spend the money far more wisely or, preferably, we ought to say to 
those families, we will not tax you so we can demand and elicit from an 
art community politically correct statements in which they do not 
necessarily believe but for which they will seek to alter their art in 
order to get the Federal funding.
  In short, the Government should not pick and choose among different 
points of view and value systems. Garth Brooks' fans pay their own way, 
while the NEA canvasses the Nation for politically correct ``art'' that 
needs a transfusion from the Treasury.
  If country music folks can spend their own money to enjoy the art 
they enjoy, I don't know why those who would patronize the ballet or 
the symphony or would somehow want to induce the support of politically 
correct art can't support their own version of what they enjoy in the 
field of art or performance. It is bad public policy to have these 
direct Federal subsidies of free expression.
  Third, Congress had no constitutional authority to create or fund the 
NEA.
  Although funding for the NEA is small in comparison to the overall 
budget, elimination of this agency sends the message that Congress is 
taking seriously its obligation to restrict the Federal Government's 
actions to the limited role envisioned by the Framers of the 
Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution is there any grant of 
authority that could reasonably be construed to include promotion of 
the arts.
  There has been a little debate about this. I would like to point out 
that during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, 
delegate Charles Pinckney introduced a motion calling for the Federal 
Government to subsidize the arts in the United States. Although the 
Founding Fathers were cultured men who knew firsthand of various 
European systems for public arts patronage, they overwhelmingly 
rejected Pinckney's suggestion because of their belief in limited, 
constitutional government. Accordingly, nowhere in its list of the 
powers enumerated and delegated to the Federal Government does the 
Constitution specify a power to subsidize the arts. It was considered 
and overwhelmingly rejected by the founders.
  Fourth, the arts receive funding from a variety of other sources, and 
they really don't need the NEA money. The arts in America have 
traditionally been funded by the private sector. Up until the creation 
of the National Endowment for the Arts in the mid-1960s, the arts 
flourished in this country. As a matter of fact, from my perspective, I 
don't think we have had a superior development of arts in America with 
Federal subsidies or Federal funding. And, if we can believe the 
criticism of federally funded art as being art which has been distorted 
in order to follow the dollars of the Federal bureaucrats, insincere 
art that comes as a result of an enticement to be politically correct 
and doesn't really represent the expression of the artist, it can't, by 
definition, be art which would be as sound in quality as art which 
would have emanated from the conviction of one to convey what one 
believed.
  As a matter of fact, if one was to compare the art generated prior to 
the NEA to art that has come after NEA, I don't think it would be any 
problem to see we have had great art throughout the history of the 
United States and worthy art for our consideration and our heritage in 
the absence of the subsidy of the Federal Government.
  The growth of private sector charitable giving in recent years has 
rendered the NEA funding relatively insignificant to the arts 
community. Private funding of the arts has been rising consistently 
since 1965. It is estimated that individuals alone will donate nearly 
$1 billion to the arts and humanities this year. That is the estimate 
of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Subcommittee on 
Oversight and Investigations.
  Overall giving to the arts in 1996 totaled almost $10 billion, up 
from $6.5 billion in 1991, dwarfing the NEA's Federal subsidy. This 40-
percent increase in private giving occurred during the same period that 
the NEA budget was reduced by 40 percent from approximately $170 
million to $99.5 million. Thus, as conservatives had predicted, cutting 
the Federal NEA subsidy coincided with increased private support for 
the arts and culture.
  Let me make a point here. When the Government tries to elicit 
politically correct art through the NEA, it distorts what happens in 
the artistic community. It distorts it in the favor of a few who would 
gain a majority in Government. When the private marketplace supports 
art based on the quality of the art, I believe that is a superior way 
to do it, and I believe it is superior for art. It is a way of 
promoting the arts through the private sector and the marketplace which 
doesn't have the pernicious impact of promoting art which is not for 
art sake or not for communication sake, but is for the purpose of 
attracting from the bureaucrats a Federal subsidy.
  So not only is it better to have increasing funding coming from the 
private sector, in terms of providing adequate resources for the arts, 
but it provides the validity of which and the integrity of which I 
believe is much more to be desired.
  Let me give you an example. National Endowment for the Arts funding 
is just a drop in the bucket compared to giving to the arts by private 
citizens. In 1996, the Metropolitan Opera of New York received a 
$390,000 grant

[[Page S9327]]

from the Endowment. That is a Federal subsidy of $390,000. That 
amounted to less than three-tenths of 1 percent of the opera's annual 
income of $133 million, and it amounts to less than the ticket revenue 
of a single sold-out performance.
  State and local governments outspend the NEA, and their funding of 
the arts has been increasing. The arts are a healthy industry, if you 
would call it such in this country. Employment and earnings of artists 
are rising. Art attendance is up in virtually every category, and the 
educational level of artists is rising, too. Ticket receipts for arts 
are rising.
  The National Endowment for the Arts is not operating in an efficient 
and effective manner. Let me just indicate to you we have a lot of 
waste in this program. There is a lot of overhead. There is a lot of 
ineffective spending here. The NEA is not subject, for example, to the 
Chief Financial Officers Act, the Government Corporations Control Act, 
or other strict accounting standards. The NEA has not been subject to 
any outside reviews of its management or accounting procedures. And--
listen to this--the NEA has an unusually high administrative cost for a 
Government agency which now approaches 20 percent.
  We talked about whether or not the Endowment's budget would carry 
funding to common, average people, wage earners. Twenty percent of it 
goes just to fund the salaries of bureaucrats in Washington, DC, who 
make the demand that politically correct art be produced by artists who 
would otherwise paint or otherwise provide other artistic work.
  We earlier learned that 20 percent of the budget goes to 
multimillion-dollar art agencies. So you have 20 percent that goes to 
the multimillion-dollar art agencies, another 20 percent that goes to 
the bureaucrats here in Washington, DC, and almost half the budget so 
far is in categories that clearly aren't going to benefit people, even 
if the nature of the art produced was valid and had the integrity that 
art ought to have. Then you have art critics saying that the remaining 
60 percent is used to distort what would otherwise be produced in the 
marketplace.

  The National Endowment for the Arts recently wasted millions of 
dollars of taxpayers' money on a failed computer upgrade. And according 
to the NEA's own inspector general, a large percentage of grantees fail 
to document properly their use of Federal funds. So even when they send 
money out under the agenda of the bureaucracy and there are 
requirements there be documentation for the utilization of the funds, 
the NEA's own enforcement office, the inspector general, says, ``Well, 
a large percentage of the people never really explain adequately how 
they use the resource.''
  The NEA is not operating in accordance with congressional intent. 
According to its mission statement, the NEA is to foster the 
excellence, diversity, and vitality of arts in the United States and to 
broaden public access to the arts.
  One-third of direct NEA grant funds go to six large cities. One-third 
of all the funds find their way to New York, Boston, San Francisco, 
Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. The rest of the country is 
left holding the bag, having made these other locations substantial 
beneficiaries of the tax resources of America.
  Those six cities really leave much of the country without. One-third 
of the congressional districts fail to get any direct NEA funding. We 
have 435 districts. We have a lot of folks. So 140 districts, 
basically, get nothing. And, there is a large disparity in the amount 
of funding in districts that do receive funding. One-fifth of the 
direct NEA grants go to multimillion-dollar arts organizations. I 
already said that.
  Moreover, the NEA continues to fund objectionable art, continues to 
do so despite the attempts by Congress to limit such funding.
  I support and I appreciate the arts. Anybody who spent as much time 
with his mother standing behind him breathing down his neck as he sat 
on the piano bench and she counted the music and insisted on practicing 
has developed some appreciation for the arts. I don't play any of them 
well, but I manage to play three or four instruments. I have had the 
privilege of cutting a couple records and had a few people record songs 
I have written myself, but I never expected the Federal Government to 
come and subsidize what I do. Even the singing Senators don't want a 
subsidy for what we do. Of course, no one, not even the National 
Endowment, would construe what we do as art.
  But I support the arts and I know that arts enrich our lives and make 
us better citizens, arts that are created and developed by individuals 
on the basis of their own sense of communication and not as a source of 
chasing Federal funding.
  I believe we are challenged by the creative efforts and the talents 
of artists. Sometimes art doesn't have to be magnificent in order to be 
challenging or inspiring. I have seen inspiring art by children. I have 
seen inspiring art by those who are less fortunate than most of us, by 
those who are handicapped, because it represented some sincere 
expression from them as individuals. That art can teach us, it can help 
us, it can shape us, and it can challenge us.
  No doubt, the abundance and variety of artistic expression in America 
plays a significant role in shaping our culture. My position in regard 
to eliminating the NEA should not be interpreted as a repudiation of 
the arts. It should be interpreted as a means of supporting the arts.
  It must be clear that Congress should act pursuant only to its 
constitutional authority and not simply when Members of this body 
believe that it is a good idea for Congress to support something. 
Amidst all the rhetoric and all of the accusation lies a central 
salient fact: that the U.S. Government is a profoundly poor patron of 
the arts, it is a poor judge of beauty and it is an even poorer judge 
of inspiration. If we had at our disposal all the money in the world, 
it would not change this reality.

  Our resources should not be devoted toward subsidizing one kind of 
speech or expression over another, toward saying your sense of 
creativity is superior, your idea is superior to another. Rather, we 
should allow as many of those resources to remain in the hands of those 
who have earned them. When we have sought to elicit artistic 
achievement by governmental subsidy, according to some of the very best 
critics, we have distorted and profoundly impaired the ability of 
artists to operate. They have called our impact a corrosive impact on 
what would otherwise be art of greater integrity.
  With that in mind, I thank Senator Helms for his eloquent statement 
and his joining me in this amendment which would allow the Senate to 
join the House in declining to fund the National Endowment for the 
Arts.
  Mr. BENNETT addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have listened with great interest to 
the debate this afternoon, hearing interesting comments by the senior 
Senator from New York who, as he said, was present at the creation of 
the National Endowment, hearing now this eloquent and well-reasoned 
attack on the National Endowment by the junior Senator from Missouri, I 
find myself compelled to make a few comments from my own observation 
that I think will be a little different from some that we have heard.
  The Senator from Missouri talks about distorting the arts by virtue 
of Federal involvement and Federal subsidization. I can only say that 
is not what happens in my State. The main impact of the National 
Endowment for the Arts in the State of Utah has been to spread the 
arts; that is, make them available in areas in rural Utah and in poorer 
school districts where they would not be available otherwise.
  I find no distortion of the arts when a Federal grant goes to support 
the establishment of string quartets playing Bach and Beethoven and 
Mozart in areas where the people would not of themselves be able to 
sustain that kind of musical organization coming into their community. 
I don't think it is a distortion of good art to have this kind of 
spreading effect take place in the rural areas of our country.
  The Senator from Missouri makes the point that the vast amount of 
funding for the arts does, indeed, come from the private sector and 
that the amount of Federal contribution is so small as to be almost 
negligible, and he uses as his example the Metropolitan Opera.

[[Page S9328]]

  I would be happy to stipulate that if the National Endowment for the 
Arts went away, the Metropolitan Opera clearly would not. The 
Metropolitan Opera has the ability and the visibility to raise the 
money necessary to stay viable if the NEA were to disappear.
  But I stand here as a supporter of the NEA not because I love the 
Metropolitan Opera. I have been to a few performances. I think it is 
fine. I would go to more if I had the opportunity to be in New York 
more often. It is the Utah opera I am concerned about and, yes, the 
Utah opera would probably survive without support from the National 
Endowment for the Arts, but the fundraising efforts of those who put on 
and produce the Utah opera would be hampered.
  The National Endowment for the Arts is something like a ``Good 
Housekeeping Seal of Approval'' put on a local effort which allows the 
people who are running that local effort to then go out and do their 
fundraising and say, ``You see what we have here is really a class 
operation. It's something worthy of your support, worthy of your 
private contributions. Look. It's good enough that the National 
Endowment for the Arts has put their seal of approval on it.''

  There are organizations in Utah that compete heavily for that seal of 
approval, not because they are involved in any distortion of what they 
are doing for purpose of seeking a Federal grant.
  The Utah Shakespearian Festival, for example, is not going to rewrite 
Shakespeare's plays just in an effort to get a Federal grant. But if 
they can get just enough seed money out of the National Endowment for 
the Arts that says to the people of southern Utah, ``The Utah 
Shakespearian Festival has arrived, the Utah Shakespearian Festival is 
a first-class operation important enough to come to the attention of 
the National Endowment for the Arts,'' they can then take that 
statement, along with what little amount of money that came along with 
it, and redouble their fundraising efforts to make sure that the Utah 
Shakespearian Festival will thrive.
  If I may, for just a moment, talk about the Utah Shakespearian 
Festival. It started as almost a class project at the College of 
Southern Utah in Cedar City for something to do during the summer. The 
founder of the festival would probably be a little more grandiose in 
his description of what he was getting started. This was roughly 30 
years ago. It has grown to be one of the top five Shakespearian 
festivals in the country. People come from all over the country to 
attend it. And we have a marvelous, marvelous cultural experience in 
southern Utah as a result of its existence.
  Do they need money from the National Endowment for the Arts to 
survive? No, they do not. But they compete for the money as often as 
possible even though they are now a multimillion-dollar operation 
because they want the seal of approval that comes with the recognition 
by a centrally located Government agency that says, ``You are quality. 
You have reached the point where you justify our kind of concern.''
  So those who are involved in the Shakespearian festival are grateful 
to me for speaking out in their behalf on behalf of the NEA. They are 
not seeking to distort what they do. They are not, as I say, rewriting 
Shakespeare's plays so some bureaucrat will love them. They are simply 
seeking the credibility that comes with association with the National 
Endowment for the Arts.
  I have talked to school districts around the State of Utah. In every 
case, they have the same story to tell. ``If we can just get a few 
hundred dollars that has the NEA seal connected with it attached to our 
program, we can then raise far more easily the local money that we 
need.''
  No, the Utah Opera will not disappear. The Utah Shakespearian 
Festival will not disappear. The Utah Symphony will not disappear. 
Ballet West will not disappear. These are the leading arts 
organizations in Utah. But the school music programs will be hurt. The 
orchestras--they are not even big enough to be orchestras. The school 
musical activities that go on throughout rural Utah will be hurt if the 
NEA disappears. I think that is something to be concerned about.
  The Senator from Missouri says, well, the art in this country was 
just as good before the NEA as it has been afterward. I will not 
dispute that. I do not think the NEA has funded the creation of a new 
Beethoven or a new Michelangelo or a new Shakespeare. But it has made 
it possible for people to enjoy the productions of the old Michelangelo 
and Beethoven and Shakespeare in places where they had not had that 
opportunity previously.

  Of course, in my State there is a long history of public funding for 
the arts. This is, as people perhaps are beginning to get tired of 
being reminded, the sesquicentennial of the arrival of the Mormon 
pioneers in Salt Lake Valley; 150 years ago this group trekked across 
the plains, came in to found what is now the State of Utah. And there 
has been a great deal of national publicity about that, a great deal of 
discussion about the difficulties and hardships that they went through.
  In the context of this debate, I point out that within weeks after 
their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, which was about as inhospitable 
a place as they could possibly have arrived, they put on a production 
of the ``Merchant of Venice.'' In their total poverty, having walked 
across the plains, now exhausted, faced with the possibility of 
starvation because they were not sure they could get their crops in in 
time to get any kind of a harvest before the winter set in, in a 
hostile environment where no crops had ever been grown before, they 
turned their attention to put on a production of the ``Merchant of 
Venice''--public support for the arts.
  You say, ``Oh, that was all private money.'' Well, that is true. They 
did not have any Federal money. They did not have any money at all. And 
I am sure it was not the most wonderful production of the ``Merchant of 
Venice'' that has ever been put on. But they focused on the renewing, 
enriching circumstance of the arts. Brigham Young, when he arrived in 
the valley, planted his cane in the ground and said, ``Here we will 
build a temple to our God,'' establishing his first priority, which was 
worship in the manner that they saw fit. That is why they went there, 
because they were prevented from worshiping the way they saw fit when 
they had been in the United States. And so they went to leave the 
United States. When they started out for that part of the world it was 
part of Mexico.
  But the temple was 40 years in the building. Long before the temple 
was built, they had built the Salt Lake Theater. And they were having 
plays. They were supporting the arts with public funds.
  We recently passed a tax increase in Salt Lake County for one 
purpose, and one purpose only, to support the arts--public funding 
going for arts support. The Utah Symphony probably would not survive 
without that tax increase. And there was a recognition that what the 
Utah Symphony does for the school children of Utah, what the Utah 
Symphony does for the cultural atmosphere of the entire State of Utah, 
the concerts they give all up and down the State that are attended free 
by schoolchildren and others is worth public funding for the arts.
  That is a precedent that I think we cannot lose sight of when we are 
having this debate here on the floor and saying, ``The public has no 
business funding the arts. Let the private people take care of it.''
  The public has an enormous stake in seeing to it that the arts 
flourish in our society, that if we ever get to the point where our 
schoolchildren have no appreciation for Shakespeare, have no sense of 
excitement when they hear the ``Ode to Joy'' from the last movement of 
Beethoven's 9th Symphony, because they have never heard it before--oh, 
if they live in a major metropolitan area they will hear it, if they 
live within the sound of public radio, which some of our colleagues in 
the House want to destroy as well, they may hear it--but there is 
nothing quite like hearing it live in your own rural community, maybe 
badly played, put on by the local folk, and only a few hundred dollars 
from the National Endowment for the Arts that made it possible, that 
started the ball rolling, but essential, vital, important to the lives 
of all of us.

  The public, as a whole, has a stake in seeing that the arts flourish. 
Those who would cancel any kind of Federal participation in the arts 
will be sending a powerful message that the public

[[Page S9329]]

in the United States wants to turn its back on any kind of public 
involvement in disseminating the impact of the arts throughout our 
society.
  So, Mr. President, with all due respect to my colleagues for whom I 
have great personal affection who are on the other side of this issue, 
I make it clear that I stand for funding for the National Endowment for 
the Arts.
  Out of that general statement, let me make some specific comments 
about the debate we are having.
  Is the National Endowment for the Arts the perfect vehicle for this 
funding activity that I have just defended? Probably not. There are 
always improvements that can be made in the bureaucracy.
  Has the National Endowment for the Arts funded art with which I am 
disappointed? Absolutely. There is no question that the sense of 
outrage that has been raised on the floor of this House and the other 
over the years about some things that have been funded by money from 
the Federal Government is a legitimate sense of outrage.
  Unfortunately, we have ourselves in the circumstance where if you are 
for the arts you almost have to stand up for this appropriations, in 
the way the public perceives it. And if you think that there is a 
problem, you almost have to be with Senator Helms and opposing 
everything. I would hope we could get away from that. And I know there 
are a lot of amendments on the floor.
  Senator Hutchison from Texas has one that I am almost tempted to vote 
for, maybe with some tweaking I might be able to vote for it. I wish we 
could be in the atmosphere where we started out with the amendment of 
the Senator from Texas and said, ``OK, this is a description of where 
we want to be. Now let's try to work from here towards solution.''
  But unfortunately, the matter has been so polarized you almost have 
to pick a side and stand on that side and say, ``Any movement away from 
this side opens me up to misinterpretation,'' any movement away from a 
stand for the full amount approved by the subcommittee that Senator 
Gorton chairs, and on which I serve, is a demonstration you are not in 
favor of the public support for the arts; or, on the other side, any 
movement away from total elimination is a demonstration that you are in 
favor of filthy art. I do not think either of those extremes is 
accurate in the legislative situation in which we find ourselves.
  I would hope that in this Congress we would pass the bill as it came 
out of the subcommittee--I voted for it in the subcommittee and support 
it strongly on the floor--and then move toward a more reasoned or, if 
you will, less emotional analysis of what should be the future of 
funding for the arts, what should be the restructuring of the National 
Endowment for the Arts.
  Could we perhaps combine the National Endowment for the Arts and the 
National Endowment for the Humanities in a single endowment, overseeing 
both activities, and see if we can't achieve some efficiencies in 
administration, that some of the same administrative functions could 
take place to support both activities, and do that in a much less 
emotionally charged atmosphere that seems to surround this debate?

  For that reason, I will support the amendment by the chairman of the 
full committee, Senator Stevens, that says once this is all over in 
this appropriations bill, Congress should hold some hearings on this 
issue and see where we really ought to go.
  But in this emotionally charged atmosphere that we find ourselves, I 
find that those kinds of conversations get lost in the rhetoric and you 
have to chose either one side or the other. The highly polarized 
atmosphere of this debate is, I think, unfortunate.
  But in that atmosphere I have made my choice, true to the traditions 
of the State that I represent, going back 150 years. I have decided to 
support public funding for the recognition that it is the spreading of 
the arts throughout all of society that is the great benefit of the 
arts.
  It is not for the elite, who sit in the concert hall and listen to 
the Metropolitan Opera, to say, ``That is a magnificent operatic 
experience''; it is for the people in the small towns of Utah, who sing 
those operatic arias, usually rather badly, but are nonetheless 
inspired by the experience of coming in contact with that which the 
Metropolitan Opera itself helps preserve for the Nation as a whole.
  Would I like to have more money for my State out of the National 
Endowment? Of course. What politician would not, but not at the expense 
of dismantling the great artistic organizations that are at the core of 
the spreading of art throughout our society as a whole.
  So I look forward to the passage of Senator Stevens' amendment, for 
the coming of some kind of hearings for the examination of the 
particulars of how we deal with this. But I repeat again, in the 
polarization that has occurred here where you have to ultimately say 
you are on one side or the other, I have chosen the side that I have 
been on. And I wish to make that clear.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I was particularly moved by the remarks of 
the Senator from Utah and decided I would come to the floor at this 
time and add my own thoughts, which are in support of the funding for 
the National Endowment for the Arts.
  Mr. President, support for the arts and the humanities, in my 
judgment, characterizes a civil society. It establishes in many 
respects that Nation's place in history. We read so much about wars and 
politicians, but I find that the search for the arts is what really 
leaves the strongest impression about a Nation's contribution to 
mankind.
  Throughout our Nation's history, the arts have held a very valued 
place in our country. I listened earlier to our good friends and 
colleagues speak, and I went over to my reception room and lifted this 
volume entitled ``The Art in the United States Capitol.'' Would it not 
be hypocrisy for those who feel so inclined to no longer help the 
communities have their own arts, would it not be somewhat hypocritical 
for us, since we live in and work in this collection of buildings, 
amidst one of the greatest collections of art in the world, and we are 
so proud that we put this book out?
  Let me read the preface. It is 1976, the year of our bicentennial. 
94th Congress of the United States, concurrent resolution.

       Resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate 
     concurring, That there be printed with black and white and 
     color illustrations as a House document, a volume entitled 
     ``Art in the United States Capitol,'' as prepared under the 
     direction of the Architect of the Capitol; and that there be 
     printed 36,400 additional copies of such document, of which 
     10,300 will be for the use of the Senate, 22,100 copies will 
     be used for the House of Representatives, and 4,000 copies 
     for the use of the Architect of the Capitol.

  It is a beautiful volume, Mr. President. I urge those who enjoy, as I 
do, these magnificent paintings in this great institution to get a 
copy, if we can find it for them, and place it in their reception room. 
As the visitors come from all across my State, and indeed from other 
States, this is the volume which they pick up and go through with great 
pride. I am astonished we would enjoy what we have and at the same time 
not try to take the proper steps to provide for the rest of the country 
a comparable enjoyment.
  As my distinguished colleague said, while we may not have, thus far, 
with the NEA created a Michelangelo, perhaps we have instilled in men 
to study his works. I often take time to go through our galleries and 
museums all across this country to enjoy the great contributions of 
those in our Nation who have placed in history this Nation's 
contribution to the arts.
  I feel it would be a sad contradiction were Members of Congress to 
turn their back on funding for the arts at the same time we work among 
this marvelous collection of art and buildings, some of the most 
priceless pieces of art work in the country and enjoyed by millions of 
visitors every day to the Capitol of the United States.
  The Rules Committee, of which I am a member, has oversight 
responsibility for these buildings and the works of art proudly 
displayed. We have a curator, a very knowledgeable individual with whom 
I have had many, many, enjoyable conversations. Each day our own 
collection is checked. Often it has to be refurbished. The Capitol 
Building itself is one of the finest examples of 19th-century 
neoclassical architecture, and it is noted in the hallways and 
throughout some 540 rooms of the Capitol that there are over 677 works 
of

[[Page S9330]]

art, including portraits, major paintings, statutes, reliefs, frescoes, 
murals, sculptures, and other miscellaneous items.

  The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for 
the Humanities were founded some 30 years ago with the passage of the 
National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965. Since their 
inception, the NEA and the NEH have funded numerous museums, 
symphonies, and projects of historical and cultural significance.
  In my State, the economic wealth of Virginia has been the beneficiary 
of many of those contributions.
  In addition, the NEA and NEH grants served as a catalyst for 
organizations by assisting them in fundraising efforts in their own 
communities.
  How often have I attended these events. And the fact that the 
National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, DC, recognizes that this 
particular entity in Virginia is eligible for a grant has enabled them 
to raise additional funds. It is a force multiplier in the all-
important work of raising private contributions.
  Have the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities made 
mistakes? Oh, yes, Mr. President, very, very serious errors in judgment 
and mistakes. But show me any other department or agency of the Federal 
Government that has not likewise made serious mistakes in the course of 
their history. We learn by our mistakes. I was here at the time a very 
serious problem arose with the National Endowment, and I say to my good 
friend from North Carolina--and I am privileged to sit in front of his 
desk, a dear and valued friend--how properly he brought that to the 
attention of the American people. That was a serious example. But I am 
convinced we have learned from these mistakes, and they shall not be 
repeated. Fundamental change, nevertheless, is needed, Mr. President.
  In July, the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, of which I 
am privileged to be a member, had the opportunity to review, mark up 
and report legislation reauthorizing the NEA and the NEH.
  This measure, the Arts and Humanities Amendments of 1997 (S. 1020) 
makes progress toward the structural reforms many of us believe need to 
be made. It focuses the mission of the agencies, while broadening the 
populations served. It reduces bureaucracy, while increasing 
accountability. And it sets in motion a process by which a true 
endowment can be established.
  This reauthorization bill represents the bipartisan work of the 
committee with jurisdiction. During markup, there were three areas of 
the measure that I believed merited the committee's attention. I put 
forth three amendments, all of them being adopted.
  First, I expressed concern with the authorization levels contained in 
this bill. Given the current climate, working toward a balanced budget, 
which I support, we need to provide a realistic authorization level for 
the NEA. I offered an amendment to reduce authorization level for the 
NEA from $175 to $105 million, which was successful. Granted, I 
recognize that permanent reauthorization of these agencies is unlikely 
at best. But we must be realistic.
  I am pleased that the Appropriations Committee has likewise come to a 
similar level of funding.
  Second, I stated that the NEA's advisory panels need to be more 
geographically representative. Currently, membership on the panels is 
concentrated in two States: New York and California. Again, I offered 
an amendment to ensure that no more than 10 percent of panel members 
were from one State. We need to ensure that America's geographic 
diversity is represented on these panels, for it is they who determine 
which works are funded.
  Finally, I remain convinced that administrative costs must be 
limited. Every dollar saved on administrative costs is another dollar 
available for grantmaking activities. This panel recognized that fact 
last Congress, when it favorably reported a reauthorization bill with a 
12-percent cap on administrative expenses. We need to get to that 
level. I outline these points simply to illustrate that the reported 
measure, represents, in my  view, a balanced, thoughtful approach to 
the dilemma of the NEA. As I said, at the hearing before the Labor 
Committee nearly 2 months ago, I want to express my support for the 
arts and the maintenance of a national presence. But I also wish to 
express my strong support for a thorough review of the agency policy.

  The Labor and Human Resources Committee put forth a bipartisan 
consensus predicted on the hearing and amendment process. The framework 
of S. 1020 represents a solid basis for handling these issues on this 
bill. I hope that the leaders of both committees of jurisdiction can 
set forth a consensus that builds on the work done in the Labor 
Committee and can come together and craft a measure to be put in this 
bill that reflects and takes into consideration, I think, the very 
constructive considerations that have been offered by many of my 
colleagues this afternoon, and can put together a framework predicated 
on the foundation set in S. 1020.
  I understood the desire to report from the Senate Labor Committee and 
from the Senate the most favorable bill possible from the agencies' 
perspective. However, presenting the most realistic measure possible 
will ensure that our priorities are preserved.
  As a new member of the Senate Labor and Human Resources, I was 
pleased to work with Chairman Jeffords and other members of the 
committee to craft this proposal. This measure meets the need for 
structural reform, provides appropriate funding levels, and maintains 
our commitment to the arts.
  It is my hope that the work of the committee will be recognized and 
incorporated in the final legislation funding these agencies.
  One thing that this debate makes clear is the need for a thorough 
revamp of this process. I would support funding for 1 more year with 
the commitment to evaluate, through hearings before the Labor 
Committee, appropriate policy changes. It is my hope that a 
comprehensive review of Federal funding of the arts and the proposed 
alternatives--several of which have been offered on the floor--will 
resolve this annual debate.
  The United States is the world's leading economic and military 
superpower, and as we enter the second millennium, I believe we have a 
special obligation to ensure that the arts are not neglected.
  Mr. President, we are approaching the millennium. It would be tragic, 
I think, for the United States of America to begin to celebrate the 
millennium having abandoned public support for the arts and, yet, we in 
the Capitol will still remain in this magnificent set of buildings 
containing this magnificent art, which were contributions of previous 
generations.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized to 
speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. Enzi pertaining to the introduction of Senate 
Resolution 122 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on 
Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')


                      THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS

  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, with all of the discussions that have 
occurred in recent weeks regarding the Bureau of Indian Affairs [BIA], 
it seems that every year about this time, we in Congress scratch our 
heads and wring our hands over how to improve efficiency with this most 
cumbersome of Federal bureaucracies. I want to share with my colleagues 
an experience that one of my constituents recently had with the BIA. It 
deals with Hodges, Inc., a small construction firm with home offices in 
Sandy, UT. This is a case with a long and complicated history, but I 
want my colleagues to have a better understanding of what it is like 
for a small contractor to conduct business with the BIA.
  On June 20, 1994, the BIA awarded to Hodges, Inc., a contract for the 
renovation of the Taos Pueblo Day School in New Mexico, in the amount 
of $649,541. According to this agreement, the renovation work was to 
have been completed within 120 days from July 5, 1994.
  The first problem occurred when the architect of the project was also 
selected to be the contracting officer's

[[Page S9331]]

representative [COR] creating several built-in conflicts of interest. 
When Hodges, Inc., the primary contractor, pointed out several 
deficiencies in the design, the COR unfortunately interpreted these 
comments as personal attacks. Problems escalated as the COR visited the 
job site only three or four times, and failed to take into account 
differing site conditions, changes, and payment clauses of the 
contract. The COR never attempted to determine if the work was 
satisfactorily completed at the time of invoice preparation.
  Unfortunately, the COR and the contracting officer also failed to 
understand the significance and importance of issuing change orders to 
the contractor. Numerous incidents occurred during the renovation when 
change orders were issued to the contractor, directing him to perform a 
specific repair and to submit a proposal for that work. Under the terms 
of the original contract, Hodges, Inc., had no choice but to perform 
these tasks as directed and, in return, the contracting officer was to 
pay the contractor an equitable adjustment, covering any increased 
costs and recognize the additional contract performance time as a 
result of the directed change.
  However, the BIA did not always agree with the invoices submitted by 
Hodges, Inc., and arbitrarily determined the amount it would pay with 
no attempt to negotiate the payment or understand the nature of the 
expenses incurred by the contractor.
  Mr. President, competent architects and engineers know that 
renovation of an existing building is frequently far more complicated 
than new construction projects. Consequently, extra care should be 
taken to ensure the accuracy of the contract documents. The number of 
complications during renovation of the Taos Pueblo Day School that can 
be traced to defects in the plans and specifications led to significant 
changes to the contract. Singularly, these defects might not have been 
significant, but the considerable number of defects hindered the 
contractor's ability to perform in a timely and cost-efficient manner.

  Throughout all the performance process, there was no sense of urgency 
on the part of the BIA in responding to several concerns raised by the 
contractor, with delays in answering critical correspondence of up to 
45 days. The BIA's failure to respond to requests for clarification or 
direction in a timely manner impacted Hodges, Inc.'s ability to perform 
its contractual obligation. By September 1994, the antagonistic 
relationship between the BIA and Hodges, Inc., was so strained as to 
make any sort of amicable solution very difficult. Rather than having 
meaningful discussions to resolve the differences, the remaining 
performance period became a nonproductive paper war.
  The contract was terminated for default by the BIA on April 6, 1995. 
In accordance with the disputes clause of the contract, Hodges, Inc., 
appealed the termination for default to the Interior Board of Contract 
Appeals [IBCA] on June 6, 1995. In October, Hodges, Inc., filed a 
complaint with the IBCA alleging they were delayed in performing the 
contract by the BIA's improper administration of several contract 
clauses. Hodges, Inc., filed claims against the BIA in the amounts of 
$16,627.39 for improper administration of payments during contract 
performance, $82,394.53 in documenting costs because of equitable 
adjustments to the contract under the changes clause of the contract, 
and $573,398.28 requesting termination for convenience costs.
  In December, BIA agreed to a termination for convenience rather than 
the termination for default, with an effective date of April 6, 1996. 
On December 12, 1996, the BIA and Hodges, Inc., settled the termination 
for convenience costs with a payment due to Hodges, Inc., in the amount 
of $495,000.00. During the course of the negotiations the parties 
agreed that payment would be made by the middle of January 1997, the 
because the project was not yet completed by the construction 
contractor performing on behalf of the bonding company, the costs that 
the bonding company incurred would be paid directly to them by BIA.
  To almost no one's surprise, BIA did not fulfill its obligation of 
paying by mid-January. Only after my office contacted the BIA in behalf 
of Hodges, Inc., and with the oversight of the Department of the 
Interior, were payments made. The first $145,000 payment was received 
on April 2, 1997, a second $300,000 payment was received on April 16, 
1997, and a third $50,000 payment was received on May 6, 1997. All 
payments were made well after the convened date, causing undue hardship 
on the contractor who had made arrangements with its subcontractors in 
order to clear its own debts.
  Unfortunately, chapters in this strange saga continue to be written. 
BIA has denied the contractor claim to recover interest penalties owed 
them, and because the bonding company has not received payment from BIA 
for work beyond the conversion, they have been forced to withhold 
Hodges, Inc.'s performance and payment bonds with the Small Business 
Administration. As a result, Hodges, Inc., is limited on the size of 
contracts it can bid, hindering its ability to do business.
  Mr. President, this whole episode has escalated the cost of the 
renovation of the Taos Pueblo Day School from about $650,000 to $1.1 
million--$500,000 over the original amount awarded. That is a half a 
million dollars that could better be spent improving education, law 
enforcement or housing. And we wonder why things don't seem to be 
getting any better for the tribes over the years.
  In the coming days, we will discuss the future of tribal funding. As 
this debate is conducted, I ask my colleagues to also keep in mind that 
no matter how funding formulas are changed, failure to force BIA to 
improve efficiency will only hinder efforts to improve conditions for 
the tribes. A new funding formula administered by an old, inefficient, 
and unresponsive bureaucracy is the equivalent of putting new wine in 
old bottles. I encourage my colleagues to seriously consider the need 
to restructure BIA in addition to the need to restructure current 
funding formulas.


            the grand staircase-escalante national monument

  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, as my colleagues know nearly a year ago, 
on September 18, 1996, President Clinton announced the creation of the 
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument under the authority of the 
Antiquities Act, declaring 1.7 million acres in the State of Utah as a 
national monument. The majority of the citizens in southern Utah were 
understandably distressed that they were left out of the designation 
process. Today, those local citizens continue to be alarmed by the 
potential negative impact this designation may have on their counties' 
economies. While we may not wish to reverse the President's 
designation, we must ensure that the Grand Staircase-Escalante National 
Monument is sufficiently funded and managed in a way that ensures the 
integrity of the public comment process.
  I have included specific language included in the committee report 
accompanying H.R. 2107 represents the first opportunity we have to 
appropriate funds for this monument. I would like to express my 
appreciation to the chairman, Senator Slade Gorton and the 
distinguished ranking member, Senator Robert Byrd, for working with me 
to address the immediate needs of the monument.
  The language included in the committee report identifies $6,400,000 
in funding for the monument. This amount, rather than been consolidated 
in a single line item, has been distributed among 20 different 
subaccounts within the Bureau of Land Management's budget under 
``Management of Lands and Resources'' account. Because these funds are 
appropriated through so many separate budget functions, it is extremely 
important that the moneys allocated for the monument be clearly listed 
in the report by line item, so that funds are not diverted to other 
agency programs. In order to ensure that sufficient resources are 
available during this planning stage, the report language mandates that 
all of the funds designated in this bill are to be allocated to the 
Utah BLM office and the on-ground field office. I thank the chairman 
for his help in this matter.
  Mr. President, it is also important that Congress provide maximum 
flexibility at the field office level to utilize these funds in most 
effective way. The report language expresses the expectation that funds 
will be relocated as

[[Page S9332]]

needed, with an emphasis on the provision of visitor services. On this 
matter, the committee directs the BLM to work cooperatively with Kane 
and Garfield Counties and the State of Utah in accommodating the 
diverse range of visitor expectations. The agency should look first to 
the capabilities and expertise of local citizens, private and 
government entities in addressing the issue of safety, access, and 
maintenance of the areas visited by the public. The two impacted 
counties have already signed cooperative agreements with the BLM 
outlining the goals, expectations and deliverables and defining the 
counties' participation in the planning process. The reports I have 
received of this cooperative effort have been encouraging.
  The committee is appropriating ample funds to continue the 
development of a management plan and allow the continuation of the 
existing cooperative agreements with Kane and Garfield Counties. 
However, the committee has expressed that the cooperative relationship 
must not be limited to the management plan, as it has been already 
expanded to include some short-range search and rescue and other 
related concerns.
  Mr. President, regarding the ever critical matter of schools, 
President Clinton assured the people of Utah that ``the creation of 
this monument will not come at expense of Utah's children'' and that 
once land exchanges were underway, ``the differences in valuation will 
be resolve in favor of the school Trust.'' However, the committee 
rightly so, has expressed its concern that the Department of Interior 
may be undervaluating school trust lands within the monument. We have 
been very specific in our instructions to the BLM that this is 
unacceptable.
  In closing, I would like again to thank my distinguished colleagues, 
Senators Gorton and Byrd and their staff for their assistance in 
forging the directives that will guide the BLM and the Department of 
Interior in the planning and management of the Grand Staircase-
Escalante National Monument in the next fiscal year.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________