Addressing that proposed cut, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said on MSNBC Thursday morning, “Can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs?”.
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“Today we learned that the president’s FY 2018 budget blueprint proposes the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts”. Many schools where arts programs had been cut in the regular school day in recent years had offered the arts through such programs.
If our arts spending is so small, then why is this a big deal?
The endowments are cherished in particular by progressives who believe the government should make sure arts and humanities thrive in the country, while they’ve long drawn ire from conservatives who see it as a waste of tax dollars.
That federal money was used in conjunction with almost $11 million in state money to provide funding to cultural councils that support local projects in municipalities across the state.
In 2016, this funding touched 419 organizations in the five boroughs, allowing them to expand programs, elevate their profiles and – by leveraging the credibility that an NEA grant bestows – attract more donors and institutional sponsors.
Arts Huntsville Spokeswoman Daniela Perallon said not only does NEA funding help local organizations on a direct financial level, it also attracts private money as well.
Though the cuts could be devastating for local programs, Tebaldi of Mass Humanities said he was erring on the side of caution.
In the past year-and-a-half, for instance, 34 groups and artists in Oakland and Berkeley were granted more than $1.2 million in funding from the NEA. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a source of funding for Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio, would also be done away with under the Trump plan.
“What we have here is an attack upon global citizenship and national civic culture”, Jim Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, told TPM of the potential elimination of the NEH. And that is one of the primary impulses of an artist, to use a medium to explore the central questions that intrigue them and that they think are of interest to themselves and others. Put another way, if you make $50,000 a year, spending the equivalent of what the government spends on these three [NEA, NEH, and and Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which The Hill reports is slated to be privatized] programs would be like spending less than $10.
In addition to supporting museums like the Erie Canal Museum, the IMLS has given millions of dollars to Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies to support research and education programs for students.
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Some, including Billy on the Street host Billy Eichner and The Wire creator David Simon, lamented that the elimination of the NEA would cut funding to Sesame Street, though the long-running kids television program was picked up by HBO past year. Without NEA funding, and the additional resources it attracts, organizations across the city would very likely have to cut staff and reduce programming that often serves young people, particularly in low-income communities.
