How it is supposed to work
- The first Monday of February: The budget process begins when the President submits the administration's budget request for the upcoming fiscal year to Congress. Congress then develops its own revenue and spending proposals in a concurrent resolution agreed upon by both Houses of Congress.
- February: The Senate and House Budget Committees hold hearings to receive testimony from administration officials, experts from academic and business communities, representatives of national organizations, Congress and the public. Other committees review the President's budget submission. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) sends the Budget Committees its annual reports on the budget and economic outlook.
- March: The Budget Committees review all the information collected in February and, after a series of public committee meetings called "markups," each house drafts a congressional budget plan. Once completed, the committee reports to its respective House a concurrent resolution on the budget, or a budget resolution. A budget resolution sets forth budgetary levels for the upcoming fiscal year and planning levels for the following four fiscal years.
- April 15th: After the House and Senate debate amendments and pass their respective versions of the budget resolution, a conference committee resolves the differences between the budget resolutions passed by each chamber. Each then votes on the compromise version to be enacted the following fiscal year, which starts on October 1.
Specific steps within the process seldom follow the above schedule, but with rare exceptions the process is completed before October 1.
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was created by Congress in 1965 during President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. This visionary agency, providing financial support for the arts, was the result of actions initiated by President John F. Kennedy. Through the unprecedented inclusion of artists in official events, from the President’s inauguration, state dinners, and concerts at the White House, to the hiring of a consultant to define the “government’s cultural responsibilities,” the Kennedy administration made the arts a priority. August Heckscher, the consultant, recommended that a federal agency be established in order “to keep the arts free, not to organize or regiment them.”
Unfortunately, throughout the life of the NEA, its freedom, as well as its existence, has been regularly threatened.
In 1968, with increased expenses from the Vietnam war and a severe national debt, the proposed $55 million two year appropriation to the NEA faced severe resistance. Even during the post-McCarthy era, suspicion of artists lingered on the American scene. However, the Senate rejected a House amendment to eliminate NEA fellowships for individuals. That decision expressed a sustained belief in the wisdom of the federal government’s direct support of the individual artist.
The controversy over funding individual artists, and the NEA itself, had re-ignited by 1989. A touring retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe photos, depicting graphic homosexual scenes, was scheduled to open at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. when protests prompted the Gallery to cancel the exhibition. Around the same time, an Andres Serrano photograph of a crucifix dipped in the artist’s urine, part of an exhibition organized by the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, and a solo performance piece by Karen Finley, in which she covered her naked body with chocolate, received wide notoriety.
None of these works of art were created through NEA grants to individuals. In fact, the Mapplethorpe photos dated from the early ‘70s. The institutions sponsoring the exhibitions were supported by NEA funds and the Finley work was supported from a grant through the solo-performance category of the NEA’s theatre program. But each prompted strident attacks on the Endowment for using taxpayer dollars to promote offensive imagery, and NEA fellowships to individual artists were specifically targeted.
Over the next six years, conservative political and religious leaders led a sustained effort to eliminate the NEA. By 1995, funds were cut 40%, from $162.3 million to $99.5 million, fellowships to individual artists — except writers — were eliminated, re–grant programs vanished, and general support for a dance or theatre company’s season was dropped.
The impact of these attacks on the NEA caused extensive losses to arts groups and individual artists in New York City even before the large cuts to the agency itself. From 1989 to 1990, funding to the City’s arts community was decreased by 21%. By 1992, the city's arts groups had experienced a 70% decline in NEA funding—a situation which has not improved.
The New York City Arts Coalition participated extensively in protecting the agency during the crises of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Several bus trips to Washington were organized and appointments made for teams of local arts advocates to meet with members of Congress.
We also conducted a 30,000 piece mailing to organize individuals across the country; and disseminated up-to-the-minute information and analysis of the national scene to New York City supporters of the arts.
Having developed cooperative relationships with Washington D.C. based arts advocacy groups such as the American Arts Alliance and the American Symphony Orchestra League, the New York City Arts Coalition continues to monitor activities at the federal level and is ready to respond to further efforts to eliminate the NEA or cut its funding.
