Kay Bailey Hutchison: “I think it is really a healthy thing that we are going to be debating the NEA and what kind of funding the NEA has and…”

“I think it is really a healthy thing that we are going to be debating the NEA and what kind of funding the NEA has and how it is allocated, because I think a number of people in our country have concerns about some of the types of grants that the NEA has approved. There have been inappropriate uses of NEA funding. The National Endowment for the Arts I think is a program that everyone hoped would establish as a priority a commitment to the arts in this country. I believe that is a proper commitment for our country to encourage arts in our country, to make arts accessible to all the people of our country, to educate our children in the importance of the arts. All of these things are worthy goals. But because we have seen the funding of obscenity, of pornography, of things that you could not even in your most modest attempts to describe as art, many people have opposed the NEA. And many people have said, 'We don't need it. Why would we want the Government involved in this?'”