NEA funding stripped from the economic stimulus package

I was really disappointed this week when Congress decided to strip the stimulus bill of the $50 million that was going to the National Endowment for the Arts.  I think everyone in the arts community felt a little kick in the pants with that one.  What happened to our 1%?  Remember the One Percent for the Arts campaign from a few months ago?  I guess Congress didn’t care that we RSVP’d to the Facebook event.  Congress, don’t you read my status updates?

So we got bubcus.  Would you like to see what bubcus looks like?  I’ve been into making graphs lately (it’s the only way I can wrap my head around numbers this big).

To put this into perspective:

1.) The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is a federally funded organization that gives grants to help fund worthy arts organizations.  Put another way, the job of the NEA is to give out money to stimulate OUR jobs in the economy’s arts sector.

2.) The budget of the NEA in the mid-90s was $180 million.  The budget was slashed to $99.5 million in 1996 because of pressure from conservative groups, who criticized the agency for giving money to dirty, dirty, sleazy artist-types.  Great hurrah was made in 2008 when George Bush finally increased the budget to a lousy $144 million.

3.) Giving $50 million of the stimulus money to the NEA would have represented just 0.00597% of the overall stimulus package, but would have increased the NEAs budget by over 30%.

4.) According to AmericansForTheArts.org: “National Endowment for the Arts funds, on average, leverage $7 in additional support through local, state, and private donations, for every one dollar in federal support.  Fifty million in economic stimulus will leverage $350 million of investment in the nonprofit arts, which will help prevent 14,422 jobs from being lost.”

5.) The budget of a comparable organization in Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, is US$122.3 million.  Less than the NEA’s, of course, but the entire population of Canada is 33 million (about the same as California).  Taking population into consideration, the Canadian government sets aside $3.68 per person for arts spending each year.  The United States, with a population of over 303 million, spends $0.000473 per person on arts spending.  The $50 million that Obama proposed to add to the NEA’s budget would have raised that number to $0.000474.

6.) That is pathetic.

7.) The NEA’s motto: “A great nation deserves great art.”

8.) Congress’ motto: “Unless it costs money or actually involves art.”