PRESIDENT'S BUDGET PROPOSES CUTS IN NEA SPENDING

he Bush administration's fiscal year 2009 budget proposal sent to Congress on February 4th sets spending for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) at $128.4 million--the same budget level proposed for fiscal 2008, but a spending cut of $16.3 million from current funds. In the final appropriations measure signed into law by the President in December, Congress approved an increase in the arts Endowment's 2008 funding to $144.7 million.

At the President's budget level request of $128.4 million, direct grants would lose almost $10 million, Challenge America would decrease by just under $800,000, and the American Masterpieces program would remain funded at $13.3 million, the level set for the initiative in this year's budget. Because the overall total for program grants would decline, the total amount in the proposed FY09 budget for state and regional partnerships would go down by $7.2 million.

The spending proposed for NEA comes wrapped in a $3.1 trillion budget that virtually freezes spending on most domestic discretionary programs and cuts funds in domestic expenditures by $23 billion in 2009. At the same time, the budget provides sizable increases for defense, nearly 8 percent more; for diplomacy, including funds to hire more than 1,000 new diplomats; and homeland security, which would see its budget increase by nearly 20 percent.

As for other federal cultural agencies, the Bush administration's FY2009 budget leaves spending for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) at the 2008 level with virtually no cut in funds at $144 million. For the Office of Museum Services, it proposes an increase of $8 million to $38.5 million. As for the Department of Education's arts in education program, the Bush administration for the eighth year in a row requests zero funds. In the FY2008 funding measure, Congress appropriated $37.53 million for the arts in education grants.

The budget proposed by President Bush challenges the Democratic majority in Congress to identify its own spending priorities, and conceivably re-enact the budget politics played out in the year just ended, with the President threatening to veto spending bills which might exceed his spending totals.