The Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, by a 14-4 vote, Wednesday approved a bill to reauthorize and increase spending on the embattled National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities for the next five years, LEGI-SLATE News Service reported.
The bill would require the two agencies to merge their administrative functions, while placing caps on the percentage of funds that could be used for administrative purposes. The agencies also would be prohibited from spending any money on lobbying or general membership service.
The bill would create a new "arts education" component of the NEA, requiring all funds appropriated beyond the fiscal 1997 level of $99.5 million to be used for grants to programs that integrate the arts into the teaching of other school subjects, such as English, math, science, foreign languages and history.
Spending for the NEA and the NEH would increase under the legislation: In fiscal 1998, both agencies would receive an allocation of $105 million.
In raising the authorization levels, committee members on both sides of the aisle openly criticized Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee, who last week garnered full House approval for a fiscal 1998 Interior spending bill that zeroes out funding for the NEA.
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