Joe Cunningham: “if we want to save the arts and save the arts for children, $80 million goes to all States, not the majority to New York…”

“if we want to save the arts and save the arts for children, $80 million goes to all States, not the majority to New York or my State of California. There was a Republican compromise back in 1995. As the chairman of the subcommittee, along with the majority leader, we brought moderate Republicans, conservatives, in an agreement to save the arts for 3 years. Give them $99 million, let them establish their own endowment, their own endowment, and take it off of taxpayers. Twenty million dollars in administrative fees, the rest of it going to New York and California, very little to many of the States, we decided to get rid of that. Let us put the money down to the States, down to the children, and take it out of the liberal hands of the NEA. What this rule does is eliminate the organization, not the arts. If we want our rhetoric to go where it is and save the arts, let us put the money down there. When we talk about policy, when the Democrats were in the majority they eliminated this amendment on an up or down vote because they knew it would pass, that the money would get to the children, not to the liberal NEA itself.”