Budget Descided Among Priorities

Floor Speech

Mr. YARMUTH. Madam Speaker, this week the House will consider the budget resolution for fiscal year 2010. As with any budget, whether it is a household budget or the U.S. Government, the process involves deciding among priorities. And in the case of the Federal Government, it is deciding among priorities, all of which have legitimate public benefits.

Last week, the Budget Committee marked up the resolution. One of the amendments offered by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle proposed one of those decisions. Mr. Hensarling and Mr. McHenry proposed to strip $50 million of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and direct those funds to be spent for veterans' health care facilities. I applaud them very much for their interest in veterans' health care.

And I am happy to remind them and everyone else who is watching that over the past 3 years, the Democratic Congress increased funding for veterans' health care by $17 billion. And that is following 6 years under their party's rule where the number of vets actually receiving care declined.

Unfortunately, the debate on their amendment the other night left a lot to be desired as it actually became an opportunity for somebody to take cheap shots at arts funding that are not borne out by logic or facts. We just heard a little earlier the gentleman from South Carolina say arts funding is wasteful spending. Well, this day by fortuitous coincidence is Arts Advocacy Day, and I'd like to make the case for NEA funding, because, although that amendment was defeated in the Budget Committee, it may rear its head this week as well.

Mr. Hensarling supported his amendment by juxtaposing the health care needs of one of his constituents, a legitimate American military hero from Palestine, Texas, against funding for the arts. He implied that he didn't represent constituents who would benefit from arts funding. Well, I represent some legitimate American heroes as well, but I also represent Actors Theater of Louisville, a world-renowned institution; the Louisville Ballet; the Louisville Orchestra; the Kentucky

Opera and dozens of other arts groups; 7,700 employees of arts groups; and 1,500 arts-related businesses. I represent Ken von Roenn, a glass artist whose work decorates Reagan National Airport. He created an institution called Glassworks which has brought hundreds and thousands of people to Louisville, made it a national center for glass art and has provided a great economic generator in Louisville.

In total, the arts contribute in my district alone more than $250 million annually, including $100 million on arts-related spending like restaurants and hotels and so forth. All told last year, 5 million people attended arts events and cultural events in my district and they paid $5.6 million in local taxes.

Now I don't know a lot about Mr. Hensarling's district or Mr. McHenry's district, but I do know this: I know in Mr. Hensarling's district there are 1,317 arts businesses employing 3,229 people. The economic impact of the arts in Dallas, which he represents part of, was $550 million in 2006. In Mr. McHenry's district there are 947 arts-related business employing 3,043 people. In North Carolina, there are 17,000 businesses employing 159,000 people. Nationally, the impact of the arts is $166 billion, 5.7 million jobs, $104 billion in household income, $7.9 billion in local taxes, $9.1 billion in State taxes and $12.6 billion in Federal taxes. Now somebody may say that that's not an economic benefit, but I believe the facts are contrary to that. And listen to what the Chicago Tribune wrote in an editorial back in February talking about the stimulus funding for the arts:

After all, the argument that the labor-intensive arts are not job-creation engines is patently absurd; they just fuel different kinds of struggling workers, workers unaccustomed to bonuses. Their role in generating billions of dollars in ancillary economic activity for stores, restaurants and the travel business has been proven in bucketloads of surveys and analyses.

Let's think about the arts funding in another way. Fifty million dollars as a percentage of this year's budget is one seventy-thousandths of the budget. For someone who's trying to decide how to spend $35,000 in annual income, their personal budget, it's 50 cents. That's the equivalent amount. I don't know one American probably who hasn't bought a CD, hasn't gone to a movie, hasn't gone to a concert or gone to a play and spent a lot more than 50 cents.

Mr. Hensarling offered the contrast of one piece of sculpture--a selective one at that--to a veterans clinic, but I would offer another picture: a picture of an F-22 jet fighter, $143 million for one jet fighter plane.

This is about priorities and the arts are an important priority for this country.

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