Louise Slaughter: “Mr. Chairman, the amendments that were offered today were offered on behalf of the Arts Caucus of the House of…”

“Mr. Chairman, the amendments that were offered today were offered on behalf of the Arts Caucus of the House of Representatives, a bipartisan group. One of the things that helped us win this afternoon were the 25 votes of the Republican Members for which I am extraordinarily grateful. I thank my cochair, the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn), for the hard work that he has done and the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson) for her tenacious fight to try to do something here. I am certainly grateful to all the people over here on my side who saw to it that we got that victory this afternoon and I thank them. I cannot tell my colleagues how sad this makes me. I am used to not doing very well on this subject. I appreciate that there are lots of things I could come up with every year that might please the crowd. I have always tried, the 14 years I have been here, to deal with you as honestly and frankly as I can. I have been persuaded over the years of the great benefit that these three programs do to the people of the United States. We are asking not for us. We get to go see To Kill a Mockingbird. We get invited to all the good things. I am talking about all the other people out there, the people we represent, who will line up to get to a performance when a play comes to town, and who will struggle to make sure that their children are associated with the arts in school.”