Good Grief!

The New York Times is reporting that President Bush will be seeking more money for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA):

Administration officials, including White House budget experts, said that Mr. Bush would propose an increase of $15 million to $20 million for the coming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. That would be the largest rise in two decades and far more than the most recent increases, about $500,000 for 2003 and $5 million for this year.

I wholeheartedly agree with Sheldon Richman and David Boaz from the Cato Institute:

Since art museums, symphony orchestras, humanities scholarship, and public television and radio are enjoyed predominantly by people of greater-than-average income and education, the federal cultural agencies oversee a fundamentally unfair transfer of wealth from the lower classes up,” they write. Moreover, “Taxpayer subsidy of the arts, scholarship, and broadcasting is inappropriate because it is outside the range of the proper functions of government, and as such it needlessly politicizes, and therefore corrupts, an area of life that should be left untainted by politics.

That nicely summarizes what I feel are two problems with government arts funding. First of all, the government is overstepping its role (and also setting implied boundaries for funding recipients–the 1999 controversy at the Brooklyn Museum of Art is just one example). Secondly, I have moral objections to taxpayer money being spent in this way when there are people who can’t afford healthcare and education and whatnot. If you enjoy the arts, donate your own money (no strings attached) to your favorite artist or arts organization.