Asa Hutchinson: “Senator Sessions, you are exactly right. One of the areas that this Republican-controlled Congress has pushed for most…”

“Senator Sessions, you are exactly right. One of the areas that this Republican-controlled Congress has pushed for most strongly has been local control. In welfare reform, in a whole host of areas, we said, ``Let's flow that power back out of Washington, back to the States.'' There is no better example, I think, of where we could do that than in the area of the arts. We not only have a 20-percent overhead that we are paying just by having this bureaucracy of almost 150 employees dispensing this money, but we have a small group that makes decisions on what will be funded across this country, if you will, making themselves the arbiters of what is good art, and the control of our constituents is minimized because of the distance, the inability to really affect the decisions that are made. So, yes, I think the citizens of Alabama, the citizens of my home State of Arkansas, will have much greater input dealing with the Arkansas Arts Council or the Alabama Legislature, or the Governor's office than trying to affect the decisions that are made in Washington, DC, by a select group.”