Louise Slaughter: “we are calling up this amendment to give a much-needed raise to three agencies of the Federal Government that have been…”

“we are calling up this amendment to give a much-needed raise to three agencies of the Federal Government that have been starved by this Congress for a number of years simply because of misperceptions and absolute downright lies about the kind of work that they have done. I do not think any reasonable person in the United States can dispute the good work that these agencies do. As a matter of fact, in the years which we struggled just to keep it alive, we have gotten a lot of help from the associations, the counties, the conference of mayors, major corporations in the United States who believe that creative thinking is the key to success. This year we can afford to give to the National Endowment of Arts $15 million more, and $5 million more to the National Endowment for Humanities, and only 2 million more, I wish it were more, for the Museum Service, which does so much, the Museum and Library Service. The debate over the years about these three agencies, over this government have taken such a terrible beating. Things have been said on the floor that have been, as I said earlier, misperceptions and down right wrong. But we struggle just simply to keep them alive. But we have ample proof from the response of the people throughout the United States that they not only want these agencies alive, they want these agencies to survive.”