National Endowment for the Arts. The National Endowment for the Arts currently consumes some 98 million taxpayer dollars annually. A measure proposed by Representative Cliff Stearns (R-FL) would take a small, 2.5 percent bite totaling $2.1 million out of that budget. Rep. Stearns noted that the Founding Fathers did not give the federal government the power under the U.S. Constitution to fund arts programs. "During the Constitutional Convention, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina offered a motion to authorize and ‘establish seminaries for the promotion of literature and the arts and sciences.’ The motion was overwhelmingly defeated because the framers of our Constitution did not want the federal government to promote the arts with federal funds."
Rep. Stearns measure, an amendment to H.R. 2466, was rejected by the House on July 14, 1999 by a vote of 124-300 (Roll Call 287). We have assigned pluses to the yeas.
