This proposed arts increase is little more than a two-bit issue. Three cents more!!
Oh, please. In the scope of our national budget the proposed arts appropriation is miniscule. Moreover, the emphasis will be on classic art, not the offensive shock "art" of the past couple of decades. Now, you may prefer to have deginerates like the Maplethorpe crowd stand as repesentative of our culture at the begining of this century but I do not. My idea of art isn't a bunch of no talent sleezes like Christina Aguilar, Madonna, P.Diddy, R.Kelly, Nelli or dozens of others who are seemingly unable to speak in more than monosylables such as "Yo" and "Ho". Yet they skip around on stage, weighted down with gaudy "bling", grabbing their privates every 2 seconds and the popular view is that sort of trash is talent. It we do not actively counter that then history will record it as reflective of all our citizens, that means you, too.
Whether some want to admit it or not we are in a "culture war". Some of the offensive works funded by the NEA fall into the leftists' pro-homosexuality, antireligion agenda.
That the government actually sanctions this work instead of letting private enterprise finance it or even letting them be prosecuted for obscenity advances the ball for the left.
Now what does it cost (culturally as well as financially)?