Let's Cut Some Spending: Eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts

Metropolitan Museum of Art/Creative Commons

In our Let's Cut Some Spending series, ForAmerica chronicles the many ways Washington wastes YOUR tax dollars - and as you’ll see, the list is endless.

Today’s offering: Eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts!

Citizens Against Government Waste reports:

Created in 1965, the NEA and NEH are the perfect examples of the government dabbling in fields that should be left entirely to the private sector. More than 50 years later, all efforts to reign in NEA and NEH spending have been rebuffed because special interest groups and their political allies have long fought for every drop of funding…

Plays, paintings, pageants, and scholarly articles, regardless of their merit or attraction, should not be forcibly financed by taxpayers. Actors, artists, and academics are no more deserving of subsidies than their counterparts in other fields; the federal government should refrain from funding all of them. Anything else is anathema to taxpayers.

Unfortunately, legislators doubled down on funding for the NEA and NEH in the CARES Act, providing $75 million for each. The $150 million in funding added 36.2 percent to the $414 million provided for the two entities in the FY 2023 appropriations bills.

In 2017, President Donald Trump's budget sought to entirely eliminate the NEA, but of course it didn't happen.

But it needs to happen. As CAGW notes - the arts are wonderful and add to our lives, but they need to be entirely part of the private sector. The government has no business funding them.

Especially when the country is $33 trillion in debt.