Could $499,000 in Grants That Help Our Soldiers Be One Reason Congress Spared the NEA?
Submitted by admin on May 11, 2017
From Carolinia A. Miranda, writing for the Los Angeles Times:
After President Trump threatened to eliminate the [National Endowment for the Arts], Congress approved a spending bill that not only funds the NEA for another year, but increased its $148 million annual budget by nearly $2 million. Lost in much of the acrimonious debate over whether the NEA should live or die is the organization’s support for cultural programs that cater to military veterans, active duty service members and their families. There’s the theater program geared to military families in North Carolina, art-making classes for veterans in Salt Lake City and Shakespeare productions staffed by veterans in Los Angeles — not to mention a beloved children’s theater program based in Missoula, Mont., that organizes productions at far-flung U.S. military installations around the world. These are just a few of the programs the NEA has helped fund.