David Skaggs: “Mr. Chairman, we are being sold a basic intellectual fallacy in the gentleman's argument this morning, that because…”

“Mr. Chairman, we are being sold a basic intellectual fallacy in the gentleman's argument this morning, that because private philanthropy is doing a lot, we should assume that it can do it all. That does not follow. What really is at issue in this amendment, which by its own author's description is merely the next step down the road to eliminating the National Endowment for the Humanities, is the absurd proposition that this great Nation of ours will commit cultural suicide, that we will completely eliminate Federal support for one of the most fundamental needs of an informed democratic society, which is to understand its past. If that has no practical application, God help us. If we really propose to enter the next century having burned the records almost literally by not attending to their preservation, where are our roots? Where is our grasp of the ideas that are important to this land? That is what is at stake here. Are we going to take the next step to divorce ourselves from the heritage of ideas on which the Nation is built and must grow? It makes absolutely no sense to talk about practicality here.”