Late Thursday (1/20) on the Los Angeles Times blog Culture Monster, Mike Boehm reports that congressional Republicans are aiming to cut federal support for arts and culture: “the Republican Study Committee, made up of about 165 GOP members of the House of Representatives, on Thursday announced a budget-cutting plan aimed at slashing federal spending, and it calls for the elimination of the nation’s two leading makers of government arts grants: the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Also on the chopping block is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The arts and humanities endowments each get $167.5 million a year; the broadcasting agency, which supports public radio and television, gets $445 million. … The bill, called the Spending Reduction Act of 2011, aims to reduce federal spending by $2.5 trillion over 10 years. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), chairman of the Republican Senate Steering Committee, also backs the plan. Federal arts and culture spending is currently about $1.6 billion a year, not counting construction budgets.”
Posted January 24, 2011
