BUDGET/HOUSE OF REPS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Four months after President Trump proposed eliminating the cultural agencies altogether, a bill to continue to finance the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities won approval this week from the House appropriations committee.
The House bill, part of the process of thrashing out the federal budget for fiscal year 2018, includes $145 million for each endowment. The amounts represent a cut of about $5 million to each agency, but is a stark contrast to President Trump’s proposal to eliminate the endowments entirely as outlined in his first federal budget plan he announced in March.
That proposal was a political statement about the president’s wishes; Congress writes the federal budget, and those line items are now being thrashed out in the House and Senate.
The cultural funds — a small part of the broader interior and environment appropriations bill — may eventually receive a vote by the full House, perhaps as one part of a bigger omnibus bill after the summer recess.
The Republican-led Senate will weigh in on the endowments’ budgets, too, but that process probably won’t accelerate until later in the year.”
-Graham Bowley, “A Bill Funding Arts and Humanities Endowments Passes House Committee,” The New York Times online, July 20, 2017