(Washington, D.C.) – Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) issued its weekly spending cut alert aimed at eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).  NEA was formed in 1965 in an ingenious plan to keep alive art that might otherwise be spurned by private collectors or donors.  Put another way, NEA forces taxpayers to finance art that no one else wants.  Eliminating its funding, which is among the spending reductions advocated in CAGW’s Prime Cuts database, would save taxpayers $165 million in one year and $825 million over five years.   

Advocates of reducing the size and scope of NEA are not limited to right-wing ideologues.  The sitting Chairman of the NEA, Rocco Landesman, has stated that his organization’s funding has contributed to low interest in the arts by creating “too many theaters.”  In January 2011, on the NEA’s official blog, he wrote: “There are 5.7 million arts workers in this country and two million artists. Do we need three administrators for every artist?” 

John Chait, a self-described progressive, explained in February 2011, on The New Republic website, that “Even if your goal is universal access to art, you don't want the NEA, you want art vouchers for the needy.  But that would put the government in the cruelly paternalistic position of requiring the poor to spend money on a symphony instead of food.”  But getting NEA to the chopping block has already proven difficult.  Its size and tenure have generated strong interest groups that fight for every drop of funding.  When House Republicans proposed cuts to the NEA in March of 2011, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) protested, citing his state’s “Cowboy Poetry Festival” as an essential cultural event in desperate need of federal backing. 

 “Why should we provide funding for strapped actors and photographers instead of gardeners or plumbers?” asked CAGW President Tom Schatz.  “Markets, not government, can and should decide Americans’ appropriate level of arts consumption.” 

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.  The Spending Cut of the Week calls attention to a federal program that is wasteful or duplicative.