The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; The Case for and Against Cutting Government-Funded Culture

though funding for this program has been provided by the station and other public television stations and by grants from exxon corporation the corporation for public broadcasting and at and t and the bell system companies wade o at eight well i we

can reading one of the livelier scenes in congress last week was the procession of well known artists and performers fighting to protect federal funding for the arts and humanities included in the sweeping federal spending cuts proposed by president reagan by fifty percent cuts for two bodies which dispense federal arts monday the national endowment for the arts and the national endowment for the humanities the administration argues that with such basic programs as food stamps being cut the ads cannot be exempted critics say the arts are being kept far more heavily than anything else but behind that argument is another reagan people say taxpayers are funding the wrong kinds of our opponents aims to reagan is trying to take the government out of the arts altogether tonight the case for and against cutting government funded culture you run in the two endowments were set up in nineteen sixty five the humanities endowment fund scholarly research by individuals as well as universities and libraries and also puts money into humanity's related public

television programs the arts endowment fund specific projects and performances in the arts say ballet companies road tour a local theater group they play right time all the finnish apply and so on both started small with a combined funding in nineteen sixty five the two point five million dollars proposed carter administration budget for next year had a hundred and seventy five million for arts hundred and sixty nine million for humanity's president reagan has proposed cutting each roughly in half it's a proposal that turned the arts world out in force at recent congressional hearings to protest a cast from the worlds of theater dance art music was assembled and here's a sampling of what was said ms ali and i'm a violinist and i've come to give testimony my personal experiences as a young concert artists in the united states that find that it's kind of ironic that the last time i was in it inaugural

activities for president reagan he can thorson i've been a math and here i am pleading for their dividend two months later nobody will argue the let's do it what we have a hard time putting down the priority of arts and letters and the idea that he is fearless is a suit all my hope to try to correct because we can't get much resolved until that is correct that if these cuts are made it is not the middle class or well off people are going to suffer it's the poor people are going to suffer in the

prices for tickets will go up the fare that's given by a regional theaters an experimental theaters will be pale copies of broadway hits known work will be seen and all of those tenuous for bridges that are being forged for minority people underprivileged people to write to come come come of age in this country to hear their voices in the theater to authenticate themselves to their own people will be taken away and it'll be the first to be taken away to have to do something to survive and that's where the cuts will have to be made it's a direct assault on the poor and underprivileged voices in this country that's what alarms me in particular listen it stirs me really is the idea that the answer a low priority it strikes me that they want to be in the country a high priority they control the fabric of our culture through the bones and muscle the spirit of all of our civilization and a great success in

the history of art as the his jewish patronage well i'm just curious president reagan special assistant for the arts and humanities is an auction who is a critic essayist and former speechwriter for presidents nixon and ford jr heard a lot of voices raised in opposition there on the first point if the arts have to bear their fair share of budget cuts why cut them by fifty percent one other programs are being cut that reporters are less first of all a simple matter of mathematics the arts as was mentioned and the humanities have received drastic increase in support over the past ten years or so five thousand percent increase perhaps a fifty percent decrease at this point still leaves them if you look at growth government growth growth of government contribution somewhat ahead of love of mosul feels secondly and you do stop something like art subsidy before you stop forms of

the hemmings starvation is slightly slightly more drastic problem then a poem the whitney you're late and of that surprising you have to take into consideration that the real questions about the efficacy of of the endowments which lives at last week's hearing the administration is bent on destruction of the endowments percent true are you starting now to wipe them out altogether i don't think there's any truth in that there there's been a lot of serious criticism of both endowments and it's come in part from members of the artist community even people on the advisory panels involved in in an endowment i've talked to a number of people are heavily critical but i don't think there's any intent to destroy them the question of rotation basically be dispensing money or whether other ways the government can help the arts as opposed to just being a sugar daddy you gradually develops a certain out of control is another another how would you summarize the reagan administration's criticism of the way the two endowments were before the reagan administration has not attacked the basic premise so far there've been

some campaign rhetoric and later i think we can get some more detail by a member of the a group the transition but basically the feeling was that a century most the services that are necessary to be performed with less money that's an administrative savings could be made and that given and the new york times' comment on this recently hardly reaganite publication given the number of run a marginal projects that have come out of balls and downs over the years better screening could eliminate some of the draw some keep falling coming out and say what does mr reagan think of the federal role in the art should be a philosophical he's always believed that the arts are essentially a cut public in the sense of for the people but private in the sense of not a governmental function at least not something the government should control in any arbitrary way this doesn't mean eliminating the endowments that means keeping maximizing public participation citizen participation and minimizing the impact of what we've got right now is that almost unholy trinity of foundation bureaucrats

and government bureaucrats and culture bureaucrats and fun seekers who sometimes get into rather incestuous a factual game of that how to raise money i think the culture consumer loses out sometimes and in a situation like that i think then the people like an idiot at a healthy economy and encourage public participation citizen participation is less of a problem arising having to go to the federal trough there's also less a problem the subprime about attracting audiences your basic position would be a mother would be fair to say not much is going to be hurt if these cuts when i don't see anyone buying ii fantasy more more efficient and problem trim down and out with his more efficient coming out of both an homage and under duress people sometimes shape up and perform better than they do during a different hat has proven president of growth and critical roles maybe it's time to take a look i don't think this would happen though without the economic necessity of an austerity program generally there are those in congress who strongly disagree with of auction reagan approach one of them is

congressman daniel akaka democrat i call it a member of the house appropriations committee and the congressional large caucus he's also an accomplished musician they say europe where the piano and other instruments whose conduct of performances of bands and choruses among other things first and why shouldn't those cuts be made these cuts are unfair that the up in punitive are you feel it there it will affect the country's future funding of arts programs in a country as having a national purpose i feel it too the arts programs those to transmit coaches from one generation to another and this is important all country are going back to two hundred years ago and as a government function and i feel it as a national purpose and i feel also that you know it has a purpose of flow

of a bringing together the different regions and culture and also it has a double reason that through on it's there is a deeper understanding and there was communication and looking at all picture today i feel that nations need to understand each other more deeply and i feel the parts is a bridge on the fairness question you must've auction says that term the arts must be cut out of a matter of fairness from history prospective disease and starvation assert a much bigger problem than upholding the lady year it respond to that basic argument well i feel that as i have mentioned it i look on the cold as being unfair unfair in the that it's fifty percent or unfair in that there's any kind at all unfair that it's fifty percent i look at a proposal in the fiscal year at two budget where eighty

nine point seven million dollars is being proposed for military bands and that's one billion dollars more than the total budget for or an eerie as proposed by the reaganite or another at reagan administration now what about his complaint that the endowment it operated under a kind of holy trinity of bureaucrats open government and in the arts and maybe a little more efficiency and the rest might be good for them to come to shake a battle that i feel that the endowment is still operated under the light see a tripod and that is federal federal grants private individual contributions as well as corporate contributions and i feel that by cutting the federal part of the tripod would be

upsetting the arts programs and our country do you disagree with him and when he says that there were probably be no dying along any arts projects may be just a little more efficiency you think some will die i think some kind what kind of products would die i feel that this will seriously affect them and adversely affect the common people it looked fun aunt as being something for the masses idea look upon these cuts as illuminating on sale for the poor these will be the people will not be able to enjoy our programs on our country those that can afford it no will continue to enjoy the lights like a carriage much of the thinking behind the president's proposed cuts has attributed to report by a task force of the heritage foundation last november michael joyce chaired that task force and served on the rig and humanities transition team is currently executive director of the john hamilton foundation

joyce the endowments doing wrong now in your view what i should like to begin by explaining that i do not represent the position of the heritage foundation that's an independent think tank that doesn't take institutional positions rather i represent the people who did the taskforce project and you are represented this time the transition team that i served ensemble in to talk about the report i'm very glad to have the chance to say something about this report because it's a it's been a highly rumored and i think a little red many things about their resumes out to be the case of the main point i think that we took in this review we did of the two endowments and by the way there are quite different and so it what to do with one at a time in the case of the national endowment for the arts for example the position that we took was this that the arts are being defined principally is entertainment that is that the arts are being understood only at were chiefly we say as the as the performance and the exhibition

of passport works our concern was that was being norton was the creative artistic spirit and so we were arguing that our art for art's sake or to be the highest priority for the endowment has her calling for a redefinition enter a reaffirmation of the original purposes of the nea you know these again father there's a temptation to look at things and in humanitarian terms of his own border station and made between the humanities which consist only disciplines have long been part of our tradition history philosophy literature and the rest we think that those disciplines provide the framework in which the manatees want to be understood not to be supported and sui argued for the support of scholarship and those in those disciplines and for the dissemination at all levels of education of the main learning that flows of those disciplines what concerned us was a

confusion between that and what we might call humanitarianism that is thinking good things saying good things to ingrid think is an example of what you don't think any age should be funded now part of what any ages been doing is related to perfectly desirable of perhaps social goals we don't argue that those may be desirable goals for government but if we have a national endowment for the amenities should it not concern itself with the amenities so programs for example would take place in prisons and labor unions and other working women says organizations which have to do with things our consciousness raising and them are seem not to fall in the in the definition of the amenities that we pursued wasn't part of your complaint that these things seem to have a social or political motive rather than on your motive of transmitting this body of knowledge of this

senate we were concerned with the with the political character of financial and all of the mounties well i think it is this that then every effort should be made to insulate the humanities from politics but it is true that these are federal agencies but so or regulatory agencies and we do not expect recruiter agencies to audit based their activities on politically desirable goals week we purposely keep them independent so that they can do things that they were intended to do in the case of the any age we think and that the pursuit of scholarship and the dissemination of scholarly studies and fb