“Early Thursday morning President Trump, in his first federal budget plan, proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities,” writes Sopan Deb in Thursday’s (3/16) New York Times. “President Trump also proposed scrapping the Corporation for Public Broadcasting … as well as the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. It was the first time a president has called for ending the endowments. They were created in 1965…. The combined annual budgets of both endowments—about $300 million—are a tiny fraction of the $1.1 trillion of total annual discretionary spending…. Nothing will change for the endowments or other agencies immediately. Congress writes the federal budget…. Arts groups have already begun … to press Republicans in Congress to save the endowments. The House will draft a budget in the coming months, and arts groups have already been focusing lobbying efforts there.”
Posted March 16, 2017
