John Ashcroft

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Then is it my understanding that the Senator from Illinois is asking that the proponents of this amendment, who have 18 minutes left, yield to the opponents an additional 5 minutes from their time?

Mr. ASHCROFT. The Senator from Missouri is pleased to yield as much time as the distinguished Senator from North Carolina desires.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Is it my understanding that the Senator from Washington is yielding his 5 minutes to the Senator from Illinois?

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I yield myself so much time as I might consume. I do want to be responsive to some of the comments that were made by those in opposition to this amendment. They have suggested over and over again that difficulties are isolated, that they are misrepresented. And I want to bring some sense of authentication to the kinds of things in which I have been involved. In talking about the poem ``Lighght,'' if that is what this poem is, the one-word poem, there was a question about the documentation for the payment of $1,500 for the poem. The documentation we have is from Policy Analysis, August 8, 1990, No. 137, ``Subsidies to the Arts: Cultivating Mediocrity,'' by Bill Kauffman. And I quote: The NEA has been more patronizing than patron to the towns and villages of Middle America. So that is interesting to me, and especially in light of the remarks of the Senator from Iowa as if the NEA has been a savior to middle America. An example: In 1969, NEA grantee George Plimpton, editor of the American Literary Anthology/2, confounded observers by paying $1,500 for a poem by Aram Saroyan consisting of a single misspelled word, ``lighght.'' That is interesting. We have been through this particular poem. This is the entirety of the poem for which taxpayers paid. I suppose you can say it is a better poem if you put it on a bigger piece of paper so that you have a sense of the calligraphy involved. I will be willing to concede that, although I think the Senator from Iowa says it did not mean much to him anyhow. But it is kind of an interesting thing, when an assistant to an Iowa Congressman asked this grantee about the meaning of the poem, here is what the person to whom we gave the Federal funds for the distribution among other authors in the assemblage of this work said. The editor replied, ``You are from the Midwest. You are culturally deprived, so you would not understand it anyway.'' When the representative of the agency that is doling out grants treats American people who ask that kind of question, about whether or not this is an effective expenditure of tax dollars, that way, I do not think that is really such an enriching experience for our culture so that we need to continue that kind of subsidy. There has been a persistent stream of suggestions additionally from those in opposition to this amendment that there is no problem in the way the grants are awarded, and that as a matter of fact these are done by independent groups and they do not have any particular slant. That is simply not the way the world looks at it when the world reviews these things. From an article by Jan Breslauer, in a special to the Washington Post--and certainly the Washington Post is not some sort of conservative journal. Jan Breslauer is from Los Angeles and I believe is normally a critic for the Los Angeles Times in their arts department. She puts it this way, that the NEA has had a bad impact on art. It has--according to her--``. . . quietly pursued policies rooted in identity politics--a kind of separatism that emphasizes racial, sexual and cultural differences above all else.'' So in choosing people to assemble anthologies or in choosing publishers to favor or in choosing artists to favor, here is an independent individual who writes for the Los Angeles Times, writing in the Washington Post, and here is what she says about it on March 16, 1997. Perhaps this poem that I used as an example is a poem from years gone by. It happens to be a lot cleaner than any of the other examples which are objectionable now. There are a lot of materials that I simply could not bring to the floor in good conscience. I held one up a moment ago that showed what we had to mark out in order to bring it to the floor. But she puts it this way, that what has happened here is that the NEA ``. . . has quietly pursued policies rooted in identity politics--a kind of separatism that emphasizes racial, sexual and cultural difference above all else.'' I would expect that to be something that hurts the culture. When the Government spends $100 million to favor people who will emphasize racial, sexual and cultural differences, that is bad for America. My colleague and friend from Iowa can hold up 2 pennies and say this is what it costs. Well, he can show me the line on the appropriations, if he chooses, that says it costs 2 cents, but the truth of the matter is we are debating $100 million in expenditures here, $100 million in expenditure that, according to this independent observer, says it emphasizes our racial divisions. We don't need anyone to emphasize the divisions in this country racially, our divisions sexually, or our cultural differences. America needs to get beyond our differences. We need to be one nation united. We don't need to be a place where we emphasize these differences. She says, ``The art world's version of affirmative action, these policies haven't excited much controversy, but they have had a profoundly corrosive effect on the American arts.'' Now, here is the real trigger. She states a condition which would make this very serious and adverse to our culture, and then she says, the truth of the matter is this hurts the arts. Then she goes on to say how it hurts the arts, ``pigeonholing artists and pressuring them to produce work that satisfies a politically correct agenda rather than their best creative instincts.'' You have a situation where an independent observer says, all of what the NEA says aside, she says they emphasize things that divide us in race, culture, and sexual matters, and that they pigeonhole artists by getting them to know, if you want a grant from whomever it is that the NEA allows to make these designations, you have to satisfy a politically correct agenda. It is interesting to note that there are those who are eager to satisfy a politically correct agenda, and in a list of projects that was favored with funds just this year, $60,000 was given to the American Conservatory Theatre Foundation in San Francisco in order to put on a play by Tony Kushner. Here is what Tony Kushner said about art: Art should be used to ``punish Republicans.'' I suppose you can say that the funding of his plays is not a problem. You might say that more eagerly if you sat on the other side of the aisle than if you sat here, but frankly, I don't think anybody on any side of the aisle should want a Government subsidy that goes to people who say one of the purposes of art--and especially a subsidy for their art--is to punish any political party. I would be ashamed if I were hearing arguments in favor of a subsidy for some sort of literature which was designed to punish Democrats. I disagree with Democrats, but I don't think they are to be punished because they don't agree with me. I don't think we need a subsidy for artists or authors or poets who would punish them or otherwise speak against them. I think that is what Jan Breslauer was talking about when she said we are driving artists into a politically correct agenda. If you want to get the grant, you have to say things like the playwright whose plays are being subsidized in San Francisco, that art should be used to ``punish Republicans.'' Incidentally, there is a list of things here of similar sorts of grants, the kinds of things that I don't think any of us would really want to support. I should mention that Jan Breslauer, in her special to the Washington Post, of the Los Angeles Times, is not the only art critic who says we have been wasting money on politically correct art. William Craig Rice, from Harvard University, put it this way: ``The marketplace, with its potential for democratic engagement and dissemination, is hardly the enemy of the arts. The burgeoning American theater of the 19th century owed nothing to Washington. In fact, any system of selective, expert- dictated Federal support for the arts would have been anathema to the rollicking impresarios of that era.'' Here you have a poet who says, ``Wait a minute, we had great art. We had great poetry. We had great drama. And we had a system of selecting and supporting on a selective basis art during that era. It would have been an anathema, an enemy, a corrosive impact on those who were involved in the art community; creative people expressing, and audiences receiving, without the independence or the confidence to pit their taste against those critics, performers, and artists.'' The point I am making, is the U.S. Government has no business spending $100 million--you can talk about it being 2 cents if you want; I guess you can talk about it being 2 cents. The truth is $100 million is $100 million. To me that is significant. Most people in my State realize $100 million is significant. More important is the fact that Government should not be favoring one kind of speech or one kind of expression over another kind of speech or another kind of expression. We should not be highlighting someone's idea of what is good or what is bad. I move to another individual, Hilton Kramer. This was published in the Indianapolis Star, in 1993. Kramer believes that the NEA has ``gutted the initiative of private patronage.'' He says that private donors lack the confidence of their own taste. Now they ``wait to piggyback on NEA certification before they commit.'' So they wait to see who the Government says ought to be favored and who the Government says shouldn't be favored, and then the private donors pile on. I think that is inverted. We have distorted the marketplace by putting Government funding into the marketplace. Now, back again, to the first question of the Senator from Iowa about the one-word poem. He says we only paid $107 a letter for this poem. I say we paid $214 a letter for this poem based on the article in the Policy Analysis, but let's just reduce the price. I will give it to you cheap, Mr. President, $107 a letter for this poem. Yes, it was 30 years ago, but have the abuses been corrected? Absolutely not. I talked about a book, ``Blood of Mugwump.'' He says it was disavowed by the National Endowment for the Arts. Here is what the National Endowment for the Arts says in its letter to the publisher, massively subsidized in publishing this book: ``The progress report which you filed with this agency erroneously included `Blood of Mugwump' as among those volumes partially supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; this is not the case.'' I want to know who knows what book was supported when they got the grant. Would the publisher know? If you were the businessman running the printing press, would you know how you spent the money? Apparently the people who publish the book thought they spent the money that came from the Government on the ``Blood of Mugwump'' book. That is why on the book itself they put the seal of the National Endowment for the Arts. That is what the publisher thinks the money went for. It may be that the National Endowment for the Arts decided they didn't want to claim credit for the book when they saw what they had gotten, although I am puzzled by that, too, because of a letter I have seen from Jane Alexander, the Chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts, to the U.S. House of Representatives some 2 months after disavowing this book. In March they say we don't want to claim credit for ``Blood of Mugwump,'' and we think you have mistakenly or illegally or inappropriately--in a letter from the general counsel--we think you have mistakenly, illegally, or inappropriately included the fact that you spent the money. It looks to me like the author or publisher knew where they spent the money. What do they say about a publisher who does this later on? Here is what Ms. Alexander says about that publisher. She says, ``The [American Family Association] also criticized the agency for supporting Fiction Collective 2 (FC-2), a small publisher at the University of Illinois, which has introduced some of our newest minority writers of quality to the American public. Over the years, FC-2 has sustained a commitment to intellectual challenge, and some of America's greatest writers have supported it.'' She goes on to endorse the publisher. We provide the funding for which the publisher says part of what we got for it was ``Blood of Mugwump.'' Here is a letter saying you better not say we helped publish ``Blood of Mugwump,'' and then they endorse the publisher and say what a fine group they are. You don't have to read too far between the lines to find out what is going on. Incidentally, the ``Blood of Mugwump'' volume is one which is frankly so repugnant to the values of America--it talks about a clan of Catholic, gender-shifting vampires who get infections, viruses, by reading prayer books. The virus comes in through the eyes. I really cannot imagine this is the kind of thing we want to suggest to the American people, that the way you get the kind of fatal diseases or the way you really get involved in things that are counterproductive is to somehow be involved with religious artifacts or read a prayer book that will get you infected so you start eating your own flesh or the flesh of others. I had my staff look at the book and just Xerox a couple pages. I told them I didn't want anything that would offend the conscience of the American people if I showed it on television, to mark out that which should not be shown on Senate TV, and that is what came from the book. It carries the so-called Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval of the National Endowment for the Arts. It is kind of interesting, though. Here is another set of individuals who have been careful about their statements, and I think they are appropriate. There have been a lot of suggestions here that this is important or we will not have anybody who is not well to do who can appreciate art or participate in art. I think that is nonsense. They talked about Robert Penn Warren having been included in the anthology of poetry. The truth of the matter is Robert Penn Warren wrote his famous ``All the King's Men'' in 1945, 20 years before the National Endowment for the Arts came into existence. He was a nationally known, world-renowned author. The truth of the matter is we have had great individuals who have not received NEA grants. The suggestion that because a few people have succeeded or a number of people have succeeded after they have received a Federal subsidy and that they somehow could not have succeeded without a Federal subsidy, I can't really follow that logic. America has been full of good people who have written well and have produced well artistically. I don't think there has been any suggestion they have all been born to rich parents or even predominantly born to wealth. I don't think the ability to express one's self correlates to whether or not you have wealthy parents. It certainly doesn't correlate to whether or not you have been favored with a Federal grant. One thing that does correlate is the fact that most Federal grants, or a large portion of them, go to support institutions that the wealthy patronize far more than the poor do. I am quoting again from Policy Analysis in an article by Mr. Kauffman, No. 137, ``Take art museums, a favorite NEA beneficiary. Eighty-four percent of art museum visitors have attended college; less than a third of the entire population has.'' So people who are getting that subsidy are people who are very well educated. He said ``Blue- collar workers constitute 47 percent of the workforce but just 7 percent of the art museum audience.'' So you have basically one-seventh of the art museum audience that is blue collar. I am not saying we should not have art museums, but I am saying we ought to be careful, when we talk about subsidies, that we don't suggest to people we are subsidizing things for people who cannot afford them when in fact we are subsidizing programs for people who can very well afford them. Robert J. Samuelson, a well-known, outstanding economist and commentator, put it this way, calling subvention of the arts ``highbrow pork barrel,'' and ``an income transfer from middle-class taxpayers to affluent museum goers.'' Now, I think the point is that to suggest that the National Endowment for the Arts is some way that we somehow open a door for everyone who is poor to become a great artist is simply to misinterpret what is happening here. All too frequently, the National Endowment for the Arts is subsidy for well-to-do individuals to be able to do what they would do anyhow. I believe that our responsibility to tax Americans is not related to providing subsidies for people to do what they can do on their own. Maybe Abraham Lincoln said it better than anybody else, when he said that ``The role of Government is to do for people what they cannot do well for themselves.'' I think these are things that can be done well. There has been some suggestion on the part of those who would oppose this amendment, also, that the existence of good authors who have received help shows that we should have been subsidizing the program. I don't think that proves anything at all. You can have a good baseball player who got some help from the Government; does that mean we should have a program to subsidize baseball? You have to look at what happens in the absence of a subsidy and what happens in the presence of a subsidy. I think if you look at the first 200 years of this Nation's existence, basically where we had no subsidy, the quality of art was very good. As a matter of fact, it may have been better than it is today. In many respects, whenever you provide a subsidy, you pay for something that the public would not pay for. Now, usually the public won't pay for things that are not as good. In business, for example, if you have a subsidy for something and it won't exist unless you subsidize it, it means that the market doesn't really believe that it is worth what people would be asked to pay for it and it simply doesn't survive. So that subsidies themselves become a way for picking up things, in many respects, at the bottom end of quality. I won't deny that there may be fledgling artists who may be beginning and might want to try and find somebody to provide them a stake so that they can get started. But people who find their way into other professions don't have a means of getting started in their writing, in their music, and in their paintings. For my music and for my writing, I have never had that kind of subsidy. I have done it on my own. It is not that I resent those who do. But I think it is important for us to understand that when the Government chooses one and denies another, it expresses a special set of values. In my view, that special set of values is something that we ought to be careful about, especially when that special set of values is found in books like ``Blood of Mugwump,'' where you have people who are sexual deviants and vampires, who involve themselves in cannibalism and other things as a result of their problems, which come to them because they were involved in religious experiences. I think that is an affront. I am not a Catholic. I am grateful for my Catholic friends and for the influence of the Catholic Church in this culture. But if I were, as a Catholic, to look at the book ``Blood of Mugwump,'' about a Catholic family group of vampires with all this deviance and were to learn that it suggested in the book that many of their problems come as a result of a virus that infects them because they are involved in prayer, I don't know if I would think that was a very appropriate book. I don't think the Government needs to be in the business of approaching this culture of literature and subsidizing this literature, if it is going to pull the spiritual underpinnings of America from beneath us. I know there is a dispute about whether this publisher was the one that got the assistance, or whether this specific book got the assistance. The publisher seems to be representing the fact that he used the money to publish this book. The National Endowment for the Arts, having learned that people are distressed about this, now wants to say that the publisher should not have used the money for the book. But then, later on, the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts indicates that this is one fine publisher and it ought to be credited for what it has done to bring on line exciting new authors who would have novel approaches to the world. Some of those novel approaches would certainly be best left without a Federal subsidy, in my judgment. I observe the presence in the Chamber of other individuals, such as the senior Senator from North Carolina. I reserve the balance of my time at this moment and suggest the absence----

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. I thank the Chair. It is clear to me that the National Endowment for the Arts takes resources from taxpayers to spend in a way that the Government thinks it can spend better than taxpayers. Even art critics indicate that that taking has not only a bad effect on people, it divides them, seeks to separate them, but it has a corrosive effect on the arts. I believe that having the Government establish values that it tries to impose on people is a denial of the genius of America, which is when the American people impose their values on Government, not when the Government imposes its values on the people. The so-called Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval theory of support for the National Endowment for the Arts reveals the bankruptcy of the concept of Government telling people what they should believe and what they should value. I thank the Chair.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, thank you very much. I rise to address the issue of the National Endowment for the Arts and some of the arguments that have been raised in this debate. I think it is important that we debate this issue thoroughly. I think it is important that we have the discussion of as many Members of this body on this issue made as explicitly as is possible for the American people. I am not in any rush to judgment or to election on this. To say because the House of Representatives has taken a position that here the Senate should not take a position or that it should merely endorse the position of the Committee on Appropriations I think is to do less than the American people expect of us. The American people understand that the issue before us is whether or not arts are to be funded by Government and whether that is a role for Government to play. We must look at the reason why we have Government, the reason why we take money from people that they have earned and they cannot spend on their own families. That is a major issue. And whether or not we are going to take it and then give some of it back to a State where we do not have the ability to control it, or whether we are going to give part of it to the State and we are going to control the rest of it, is another major issue. I think we ought to debate these things. So I, frankly, want the Senate to move forward, and I want us to move forward with dispatch and make sure that we do not unduly delay things. But this is an issue worthy of the American people, it is worthy of our understanding. I think there are substantially basic, philosophic items that are of importance here: Does the Government have a responsibility to shape the culture by paying for artistic expression, and by paying for some artistic expression and not paying for other artistic expression? I think that is a very important point. I say that it is important to understand that both artists and nonartists are on both sides of this issue. There are people who love the arts so much that they do not want the Government to contaminate the arts. They feel that when the Government gets in the position of starting to say that this art is good and is worthy of being subsidized and this other art over here is not good and is not worthy of being subsidized, they think that is likely to distort the arts and to leave the arts in a situation of impurity, with artists who are seeking not to express themselves but to express what the bureaucrats in Washington or in a State capital would want them to express. As a matter of fact, that is exactly the point that Jan Breslauer, the critic from the Los Angeles Times, has written about. Eloquently she states--and as a matter of fact, it is more than an eloquent statement. This is a rather embarrassing indictment of the National Endowment for the Arts. Let her words speak this position as I quote them. And she says--or he says. I do not know whether Jan, J-a-n, is a ``he'' or ``she.'' I apologize if there would be any offense in what I have said. [T]he endowment has quietly pursued policies rooted in identity politics--a kind of separatism that emphasizes racial, sexual and cultural differences above all else. The art world's version of affirmative action * * *. She is describing the way the bureaucracy, known as the National Endowment for the Arts, has operated, that it has emphasized separatism, emphasizing racial, sexual, and cultural differences above all else. I think we need to get to an America that emphasizes our identity, the common things we enjoy, the freedom we embrace, not the differences we have. I think the Statue of Liberty has stood there without wincing for a long time. She stood through hurricanes and the tests of time, storms, good times and bad, in war and in peace, but I think she winces a little bit when she thinks about all the people that have come here to pursue common goals of freedom being driven by Government to be separate, to be forced apart. Jan Breslauer says, ``The Endowment has quietly pursued policies rooted in identity politics,'' this idea of separating us into separate identities. I kind of like a single identity for the United States of America. What are the different identities, she says, that are being emphasized by the National Endowment for the Arts? She says that the National Endowment is pushing us into separate racial identities, that it is pushing us into separate sexual and cultural identities. These differences are being elevated, instead of minimized, in the way, she says, the funds are given out from the National Endowment for the Arts. Fundamentally, I do not believe that Government should be striving to drive wedges between Americans. Whether it is an arts program or anything else, I think we ought to come to the point where we realize there is only one word that ought to describe us in a way that unites us, and it is ``America.'' I don't need someone to try and push me into some politics of separatism or some identity politics and provide a basis for separating me from my fellow Americans. I think the great unity of America is so very important. I think of the millions of lives lost in the Civil War for unity, so that this would be one Nation united under God with liberty and justice for a few or for this group or that group, with preferences? No, for all. The National Endowment for the Arts ``has quietly pursued policies rooted in identity politics--a kind of separatism that emphasizes racial, sexual, and cultural differences, above all else.'' These are not my words. These are not the words of some individual who is against art. These are words from a critic from the Los Angeles Times. The art world's version of affirmative action, to prefer people on the basis of their group identity rather than to prefer people on the basis of their own merit. The United States of America is a place where individuals should have the ability to succeed or fail based on their own merit. She says the art world's version of affirmative action, and its policies have had a profoundly corrosive effect on American art. A corrosive effect--I don't know how you can define that as lifting up the arts or improving the arts. We have heard individuals come to the floor over the last several days and say the reason we need this is because it allows the arts that are sponsored to be shared with the entire culture. Do we want to corrode the arts before we share them? I want to mention I believe there are some artistic endeavors here that are supported that are good ones. Sure there are. You are spending $100 million, you will probably have some good ones. The question is, Is this what Government is for, to take the hard-earned money of individuals and say we can spend that money better on art than you can spend it on your family? At a time when real wages for individuals for over half the Americans, according to a recent national article in one of our business journals, are lower than they were in 1989, some 8 years ago, do we still believe that we want to take money that people could be spending on their own families and we want to spend it on art that separates us, that emphasizes racial differences, cultural differences, that has a corrosive effect on the arts itself? That is incomprehensible. Some people think it is great to have the symphony, it is great to have great art and they think about the great artists of the past, they think about artists from my State whose works are shown in art galleries of this country and have been for hundreds of years. But that is not all that we are talking about here. Here is a piece of art that is interesting to me. This art was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. This is a poem. No, Senators, this is not the title of the poem, this is a poem. This poem, spelled L-I-G-H-G-H-T, I am not sure what it means--maybe light--this poem cost the taxpayers $1,500. This was the subject of a grant. Now, this is the English version of the poem, I have to tell you. This is not the French or the German version. Maybe it is the German version of the poem. Maybe it is not the English version. This is it. This is why we would tax individuals, take money that they earned, working hard on their jobs, and we want to say to the rest of the world, this is what you should be doing. I was stunned by the fact that my colleagues came to the floor and said we need this not because the arts need the money. They recognize it is 1 percent of the art funding in the country. As a matter of fact, less than that. But 1 percent of the art funding in the country comes from the Government. But we need it so we can have the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, that somehow when Government comes and puts its seal of approval on things like this, it signals to the country that this is what we are supposed to really look up to. I am sure getting this poem around to schoolchildren will inspire lots of them to be poets. I don't know whether this is a typographical error or whether this is profoundly insightful, but I don't think it is inspirational. I don't think we have to have the U.S. Government taking tax money from people who get up early and work hard all day and go home late, families with two parents working, one to pay the Government, the other to support the family. I don't think we do that in order to be able to put a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on this. I want to talk a little bit about this concept that you put a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on things by having Government tell people what is good and what is bad. Let me just indicate that one of my colleagues yesterday spoke, and I quote from the Congressional Record of September 15, 1997: The National Endowment for the Arts is something like a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval put on a local effort which allows people who are running that local effort to then go out and do their fundraising and say you see what we have here is really a class operation. It is something worthy of your support, worthy of your private contributions. Look, it's good enough that the National Endowment for the Arts has put their seal of approval on it. And the argument is that somehow the American people don't have the intelligence or the judgment or the capacity to know what values they want expressed in their culture. They need someone from the Federal Government to tell them that this is great poetry and that they should buy it or subsidize it. I don't believe the genius of a democracy is having the Government tell people what is good or bad. The genius of a democracy is not that the Government informs the people. The genius of a democracy is that the people inform the Government. The genius of a democracy is that the collective wisdom of the people is reflected in what is done in Washington. We have inverted the flow of information here. The people are supposed to be represented in Washington to do the will of the people. The Government is not supposed to be represented by a good seal of approval so that the people can then do the will of Government. The whole idea of a democracy is not that the Government puts its good seal of approval on anything and then the people do it. The ideal of a democracy is that the people express their wisdom to the Government, sending their representatives to achieve the will of the people, not the will of the Government. It is kind of amusing to me that we have this information flow. We are so conditioned to believing that Washington is the source of wisdom that now we have to tell the people what good poetry is, and stuff like this is good enough for their support or something else is good enough for their support. You would think we would learn that the central government is not the place to direct investment, whether it be in art or whether it be in industry. There are different cultures, there are different ways to do government. There are different ways to allocate resources. One way is to have central planning, to have the Government make the decisions, encourage or allocate the resources on its own. That is a way which was tried for a long time. Communism was a system which said we will do central planning. We will not trust the marketplace. We will not trust the judgment that people will reach on their own. We will trust the central planners, the superior intellects of Government to make those decisions. We will ask them to decide how many potatoes are grown and how many cars are made and how many TV's are made, and with the superior wisdom of centralized government, we can tell the people how things are and it will all be better. I love the joke Ronald Reagan used to tell about the guy going to buy a car. The guy said, ``You have to wait 10 years for your car but on the 12th day of February, 10 years from now, in the morning, we are going to deliver your car to you.'' The guy said, ``Oh, no, you can't deliver the car on the 12th day of February 10 years from now.'' The car salesman says, ``Why not?'' He says, ``Well, the plumber is coming then.'' The whole point is planned allocation of resources by central government is a failure, an abject failure. Yet we have people come to the floor of the Senate and say people really do not know the good art from the bad art, what to support, what not to support, and they need the Government to come look and be the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. We cannot trust the private marketplace, the will of the people, the understanding of the people to allocate the resources that they ought to put or want to put into art. We have to confiscate resources from them and then we have to use those resources as some sort of gold stock. This is what you must support, you ought to support this, this is great. Well, if you put the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on material that emphasizes, above all else, racial, sexual, and cultural differences, in the words of Jan Breslauer, the art critic, what we have is the Government telling us what is good and telling us that all these things that divide us are good and the things that unite us are not worthy of funding. In my judgment, I think we should have learned something. We should have learned that when the Founders of this great country considered this question, they voted overwhelmingly not to have the Federal Government involved in subsidies for the arts. This is not new. This idea came into being in Lyndon Johnson's plan for a Great Society. We know how the governmentalism of the Great Society has been so eminently successful in other areas--such as attempting to deal with poverty. We see there are more children on poverty now than there were when the so- called Great Society began. And in an attempt to deal with situations where there were children being born to parents who would not be parents--there were no families there, really--we have seen that problem exacerbated and intensified rather than assuaged or reduced. Here we have one of the Great Society programs and here is another one that says we know best from Government. In the area of the Great Society, as it relates to the welfare program, we have that figured out that the central government should not have a sort of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. We have abandoned the old Federal approach that says there is a way you are going to do this and this is the way, the truth, and I guess it would not be the light, would it? The Federal Government's welfare program, we found out, was a failed program. I yield to the Chair, if there is an item that needs to be brought to my attention.

Mr. ASHCROFT. I ask unanimous consent for 1 more minute in which to conclude my remarks.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Reserving the right to object, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I am aware there are other Members of this body who are going to be coming to the floor to speak on other amendments. However, because of the absence of debate at this moment, I will add additional thoughts to the thoughts I have already expressed regarding the need to cease funding the National Endowment for the Arts. I have made my position clear here, and I hope I can add something by way of suggesting that there are a variety of reasons why it is time for us to stop spending the hard-earned resources of taxpayers to theoretically support or engender culture or the arts in this country. I find it somewhat amusing for individuals to suggest we need to have a Federal subsidy in order for people to be artistic. For us to come to that conclusion involves us in what is a substantial repudiation of American heritage, culture and art. We began as a nation long before the midnight ride of Paul Revere. As a matter of fact, we remember the poem: 'Twas late in April of '75. Hardly a man is still alive That can remember that special day and year Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. Those who say you have to have subsidies in order to have art or poetry would have to wonder how that poem ever came into existence. Or they might say you have to have a subsidy in order to have quality art. Well, I don't know, but I believe that some of the poems and some of the art and some of the literature of bygone days will stand inspection very well and stand in comparison very well with items that have been produced more recently. So I want to say for the first several hundred years of this culture on this continent we managed to muddle through, but I don't think we muddled through it all. We mastered, through creating things that were truly artistic and truly things of value, the kind of art that would speak to people and that they could understand. I was interested in noting an article by William Craig Rice, who is a poet and an essayist, who teaches expository writing at Harvard University. As an individual who went to a competing institution, I am not accustomed to citing Harvard University, but you would think if there would be anyone who would be able to have insight about this, it might be someone from Harvard University, and you might expect them to be uniform in their support of the NEA. He lists objections to the NEA. He says that the NEA refused to fund a conservatory in New York City because its students were required to master the human figure in drawing like the old masters did. They could actually draw people and not just put paint on paper. That disqualified the particular institution from participating in the NEA funding. He points out that the NEA said that being able to draw people that looked like people would hamper the creativity of artists. I wonder whether the NEA has this figured out. I don't believe that people are not creative because they can draw the human figure. I don't think you would want to say that Rembrandt was not a creative individual. I don't think you would want to say Thomas Hart Benton, from my home State, with his ability to capture people at work, people bringing this Nation into existence, people conducting themselves in a way that makes America strong--was not a creative individual. He showed people in the fields, he showed people in the Civil War, he showed people at play, but he showed America as America was and for the strength of it. I don't think being able to do that hampers creativity. William Craig Rice, who is a poet and essayist, who teaches expository writing at Harvard, says, ``The NEA recently refused funding to an art colony on aesthetic and sociopolitical grounds and then made the inclusion of performance artists and installation artists a condition of future funding.'' So you start criticizing people because they are the wrong sociopolitical mix. Here we have the National Endowment for the Arts taking taxpayers' resources, trying to impose on people some political correctness or sociopolitical correctness, the right kind of mix, in order to satisfy the bureaucracy. These kinds of things--denying funding because they insist that people learn how to draw so that they are recognizable figures, denying funding because there is an inappropriate sociopolitical mix among the artists--sound to me like Government management of what people are thinking and of the kind of people with whom they would associate. It seems to me that is not what we earn money for and pay taxes for: so Government could discriminate against someone because they were not of the right sociopolitical mix. Mr. Rice, of Harvard University, further writes that ``Nowadays, NEA grants are weighted toward multiculturalism, a political cause.'' I wonder if, really, we as Americans want to try to foster and advance political causes through a subterfuge which we might label as the National Endowment for the Arts. Now, his is not the only voice that has been raised in the arts community against the NEA. His is not the only voice which has alleged that the NEA is really an enemy of the arts, which he does say. He puts it this way: ``The marketplace, with its potential for democratic engagement and dissemination, is hardly the enemy of the arts. The burgeoning American theater of the 19th century owed nothing to Washington. In fact, any system of selective, expert-dictated federal support for the arts would have been anathema to the rollicking impresarios of that era.'' He says had we had a National Endowment for the Arts a century ago, it would have hurt the arts in America, it would have curtailed, it would have stifled the creativity of individuals in the arts community. Responding to a written piece by Robert Storr and Lawrence W. Levine, Rice puts it this way: ``What both authors fail to recognize in their own examples is that the NEA actually harms artists and the arts by its methods of selective sponsorship and top-down control.'' America prides itself on the freedom of expression, free speech, the ability of people to stand and speak their mind, and America has also understood that speech is not merely what you say but it is your ability to communicate. If you want to communicate artistically, in poetry, graphically or pictorially, that is one of the privileges and rights of an American, within certain bounds of decency to protect children and others from obscenity. We say you are entitled to be able to express yourself. We have never thought that the Government should be meddling in the way people express themselves. It should not be subsidizing one person's expression as opposed to another person's expression. Here is a good reason for it. Here the author says, ``The NEA actually harms artists and the arts by its methods of selective sponsorship and top-down control.'' We have to measure what is meant by free speech. I don't think we would say that one of the things included in free speech is top-down control. The control of speech is the kind of thing we associate with other cultures. Now, we know about what happened in Eastern Europe, we know what used to happen in the Soviet Union, and we abhor what we hear about the control of communication in China. Yet we have an arts bureaucracy which is saying to the arts community, if you want to have the favor of your Government, you have to be willing to participate in a system of selective sponsorship and top-down control. To put it additionally, Jan Breslauer, of the Los Angeles Times, in a special to the Washington Post said it this way: The effect on the American art system is ``pigeonholing artists and pressuring them to produce work that satisfies a politically correct agenda rather than their best creative instincts.'' You have to understand, it takes me a minute to put this in perspective. Artists might operate at their best creative instincts in one system and they might distort or twist what they would otherwise say in order to satisfy something else in the other. She is saying that the National Endowment for the Arts pigeonholes artists, it gets them to create within a very confining space, a space they didn't create, but a place where they would be put if they wanted to satisfy the bureaucracy. Then it says it pressures them to produce work that is politically correct rather than work that is the best of what they can offer. America succeeds when it operates at its highest and best. America fails when it accommodates or induces people to operate at their lowest and least. I think it is tragic that we have in the National Endowment for the Arts what is confessed by the art critic of the Los Angeles Times, the person who spends her endeavors studying art and commenting on art, a situation where artists are pigeonholed and pressured to produce work that satisfies a politically correct agenda rather than producing work that reflects their best creative instincts. I think that is a pretty serious charge. I think there are other reasons why the National Endowment for the Arts ought to be zeroed out in funding. It does not spend money well. It is not really something authorized under the Constitution. The founders of this country considered it, they voted on it, they rejected it. Somehow, the elasticity that some people find in the Constitution is supposed to now grow with the document to include something that no one ever voted to ratify as part of the Constitution but somehow it is appropriate now but it was not appropriate back then. The National Endowment itself is not an efficient organization. It spends 20 percent of its resources on overhead, so that by sending the money to Washington, DC, we get a 20 percent shrink factor immediately just by including the bureaucracy in that which we are pursuing. So my judgment is that we ought to think carefully about saying what the House has said. Let's stop. This thing was never intended as a governmental responsibility by those who constructed this country and founded it and developed the Constitution to limit what we would do. This was not to be within the limits. Let's stop the waste of money. Let's stop the frivolous things that are done. I was interested to see one of the projects, and I mentioned this before. This represents a poem funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. This is not the title for the poem, this is the entirety of the poem. I had represented earlier that I think this is the English version of the poem but because this is not a word which I recognize in the English dictionary, it could be some other language version of the poem. This poem cost taxpayers $1,500 to write. So it would be about $214 a letter we paid for this poem. I wonder if this deserves what some Members of this body have called the need for the Federal Government to be placing the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on various art projects. It is obvious to me that the average American is not smart enough to recognize this as genius and it may take the special imprimatur of the U.S. Government to tell us just how profound this is--whatever it is-- and that we should support this because, well, because Government says to support it. There are those who came to the floor yesterday who said we need the National Endowment for the Arts not because it is a big part of arts funding--they recognize it is 1 percent or less. The truth of the matter is 99 percent of arts funding comes from other sources. They said we need it because when the National Endowment for the Arts funds something, it tells everybody that it is something good and that by putting that sort of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on it, it lets people know to support it as opposed to people being able to make up their own minds. I have to concede the argument is partly correct. I don't think the average American would think this is worth $1,500 unless he was told it was by his Government. It may be that, once told by Government that these seven letters are worth $214 apiece, the average American citizen will nod in complete complicity and agreement, and say, ``Well, Thelma, I never thought of it that way before, but now that the Federal Government has told me of the value of those letters, whatever they mean, I sure hope we get a chance to do that over and over again.'' Well, as a matter of fact, they do get a chance to do it over and over again. But the truth of the matter is, there is something more profound than the light that I would make of this poem--would I be making light of light poetry? I don't know whether that means light or not. The truth is--and it is a fundamental truth--that the values are not to be ascertained in this culture by Government and then imposed on the people. The genius of America is that the values are to be developed by the people and imposed on the Government. The genius of a democracy is that people have values that they say should be reflected in their Government and not that the Government has values that it imposes upon citizens. Similarly, when they said that we need this kind of guidance from Government so that we will know what to support in the marketplace, that smacks of marketplace planning of other economies. You know, communism is the system whereby the government decided what should be produced and what should not be produced. It allocated the resources of the culture. It said, well, we are going to have this many potatoes and airplanes, and we are going to have this many chairs, and we are not going to allow the marketplace to operate. They tried that for 70, 80 years. Cuba is still trying it; so is North Korea, and their people are in serious distress, and we hear the subject of relief over and over again to try to give them something to eat. But in this country, we have all said that the marketplace should determine this, and we don't believe Government should decide how to allocate resources. Finally, most of the world has come to that conclusion. The Soviet system tried to manage production based on the values of the central government and say how money ought to be spent, and it collapsed. And when it came down, it wasn't long before the Berlin wall fell, too. Thankfully, the people are free there, and they are rejoicing over their freedom, and the government that was at the center of things no longer tells them what to produce or what not to produce. It is their privilege as free citizens to decide about how things ought to be produced and when and where. The marketplace either rewards them or punishes them. If they don't produce things that are particularly good, they don't sell well. That has a way of suggesting that they should change their minds. Here we have the National Endowment for the Arts with the argument or suggestion that it is a good thing to have Government telling people from the center of the Nation what they should or should not reward with their own support. Well, frankly, that is a failed system. I could understand short memories, but it seems to me that while we are continually reminded of the poverty of that system and the abject failure of that system by countries like North Korea and Cuba, we should at least remember long enough to know that we should not be embracing some sort of resource allocation strategy in the United States of America whereby we put a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on seven letters that may make some sense somewhere, and say, folks, with our help, you can learn to recognize a real buy in art when we tell you that it is a real buy. I appreciate the opportunity to make these remarks. I appreciate the opportunity for the debate to go forward on the National Endowment for the Arts. I think it is time to say to the American people, who are taxed at a higher level than ever before, we believe you work hard for your resources and we should not take your hard-earned dollars and try to tell you what to support and what not to support artistically. We should let you have some of those resources to spend, believing you can spend your resources better on your own family than we can to subsidize what the Government has decided is art. I yield the floor. Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed now to the committee amendment on page 96.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Helms from North Carolina for having participated and spoken in advance about this amendment. This amendment relates to the funding of the National Endowment for the Arts. It's a means whereby arts are subsidized by the Federal Government, where the citizens of this country are asked to participate in funding a variety of things which are designated as art or as worthy of being supported by the Government. I appreciate the leadership of Senator Helms in this matter. I thank him for his outstanding remarks which he has made earlier today. On the tomb of English architect Sir Christopher Wren, there is an inscription which reads, ``If you would see his monuments, look around you.'' Each day I am moved by the beauty of the monuments of this historic city, monuments to Washington, to Jefferson, to Lincoln. They are emblematic of what is great in the art and architecture history of the United States. For years we will stand looking at these monuments as testaments to our faith. Further, they serve to remind us of the central role that artistic and scholarly expression can and should play in our lives. It is within this context that we must determine what involvement, if any, the Federal Government should have in the arts. It is my belief that arts and humanities funding is primarily a matter for private and local initiatives. There are, however, some areas that do merit Federal assistance. For example, the Smithsonian plays an important part in transmitting the cultural heritage of Americans from one generation to the next. We appreciate the fact that we can learn about what has happened in America by visiting the Smithsonian Institution museums. I think they are of great value. Conversely, a number of federally funded programs, from, one, for instance, labeled ``A Theater History of Women Who Dressed as Men,'' to projects representing various manifestations of political correctness, are a waste of our taxpayers' resources. Begun in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society Program, the National Endowment for the Arts was supposed to raise the level of artistic excellence and promote a wide variety of art. The agency's budget reached a high of $176 million just 5 years ago, in 1992, and it is slated to receive $99.5 million in fiscal year 1997. Although the NEA has funded some worthwhile programs around the Nation, it has managed to create an unbroken record of special favors and embarrassments. Year after year, the NEA has doled out money to shock artists who produce obscene, antifamily, antireligious, so-called works. I will not say they are works of art. Nonetheless, President Clinton has continued his efforts to secure tax dollars for the NEA, requesting $136 million for the agency in his proposed funding for fiscal year 1998. Since the beginning of my tenure as a U.S. Senator, I have opposed Federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. I believe that Congress has no constitutional authority or valid role to play in funding the NEA. For example, during the 104th Congress, I offered, though unsuccessfully, an amendment in the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee to reduce authorization levels for the NEA by 50 percent. On July 15 the House passed legislation eliminating, this year, funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. However, on July 22 our Senate colleagues in the Senate Appropriations Committee took a different approach from the House by providing $100.06 million in funding for the NEA for fiscal year 1998. This reversed a trend of declining amounts from 1992, and sends the dollar amounts back up again. I was disappointed by this action. That is why I am here today. I am here today to attempt to persuade my colleagues to end funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. There are numbers of reasons why we should end funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. Earlier today, Senator Helms eloquently discussed one of those reasons, that the NEA has consistently funded art that is antifamily, morally objectionable, and obscene. There has been much debate on this point, and this debate, I am sure, will continue. I would like now to discuss some of the other reasons why we should stop funding the NEA. In a time when we are paying the highest taxes in the history of the United States, why should we continue funding the National Endowment for the Arts? I think our priorities should be to balance the Federal budget as quickly as possible and deliver deep across-the-board tax relief to the American people. Another public gift to the NEA bureaucrats would be a slap in the face of millions of taxpayers who deserve tax relief but were told this year we just don't have enough resources to be able to accord you the relief you deserve. Frankly, that is an inadequate response to individuals while we are funding a variety of art projects which qualify on the basis of their political correctness; art projects which would undermine the very things that parents are trying to teach their children about the values that have made this Nation great. Second, Congress should not be in the business of making direct subsidies to free speech. I really question whether it is the proper role of the Federal Government to directly subsidize free speech as we do through the National Endowment for the Arts. Government subsidies, even with the best of intentions, are dangerous because they skew the market. They tend to allocate resources to something that would not be or could not be supported on its own. And they skew the market toward whatever the Government grantmakers prefer. It says that we think a certain kind of art is best and we will pay for that kind of art but we won't pay for other kinds of art. It seems to me, to have the Federal Government as a giant art critic, trying to say that one kind of art is superior to another, one kind of speech is superior to another, one set of values is superior to another, is not something that a free nation would want to encourage. National Endowment for the Arts grants placed the stamp of official U.S. Government approval on funded art. This gives the Endowment enormous power to dictate what is regarded as art and what is not. Frankly, I believe they have made serious mistakes in the past, suggesting, of things that were nothing more than offensive, obscene material, that they were in fact art. The Los Angeles Times critic Jan Breslauer demonstrates that the NEA's subsidization of certain viewpoints poses great problems. The Los Angeles Times critic writes: [T]he endowment has quietly pursued qualities rooted in identity politics--a kind of separatism that emphasizes racial, sexual and cultural difference above all else. The art world's version of affirmative action, these policies . . . have had a profoundly corrosive effect on the American arts. . . . Here is a critic, accustomed to evaluating art, saying that the National Endowment for the Arts and its subsidies have had a profoundly corrosive effect on the American arts. All too frequently, Government programs, even well-intentioned ones, have a reverse effect, an unintended consequence, an unanticipated impact. And that is what we have here. Critics, understanding, aware, in tune with what is happening in the art world, say that what we are doing with $100 million of taxpayers' money is having a ``profoundly corrosive effect on the American arts.'' Here is how the Los Angeles Times critic says it is happening: . . . pigeonholing artists and pressuring them to produce work that satisfies a politically correct agenda rather than their best creative instincts. What the critic has really talked about here is that, instead of creating to express himself or herself, the artist ends up trying to create to express or impress Government. When you have a sale of what the communication is and a subsidy that reinforces the fact that someone is willing to sell their idea and to distort their idea for purposes of selling it, that is nothing more than a prostitution of the arts. It changes arts from their purity-- from purity to pandering. It panders after the bureaucracy and has, according to this well-known critic, ``a profoundly corrosive effect on the American arts.'' Despite Endowment claims that Federal funding permits underprivileged individuals to gain access to the arts, it is important to look at what actually happens. The NEA grants offer little more than a subsidy to the well-to-do. One-fifth of the direct NEA grants go to multimillion- dollar arts organizations, $1 out of every $5 goes to the multimillion- dollar art organizations. Harvard University political scientist Edward C. Banfield has noted that the ``art public is now, as it has always been, overwhelmingly middle and upper middle class and above average in income--relatively prosperous people who would probably enjoy art about as much in the absence of the subsidies.'' The poor and the middle class thus benefit less from public art subsidies than do the museum- and symphony-going upper middle class. Economist David Sawers of Great Britain argues that ``those who finance the subsidies through taxes are likely to be different from and poorer than those who benefit from the subsidies.'' In fact, the $99.5 million that funds the NEA also represents the entire annual tax burden for over 436,000 working-class American families. To say to nearly half a million American families, everything you have as an annual tax burden will be taken and spent to subsidize art, or so-called art, or politically correct expression which has been distorted by the bureaucrats that have demanded that things be politically correct, is an affront to hard-working American families. I think we either ought to spend the money far more wisely or, preferably, we ought to say to those families, we will not tax you so we can demand and elicit from an art community politically correct statements in which they do not necessarily believe but for which they will seek to alter their art in order to get the Federal funding. In short, the Government should not pick and choose among different points of view and value systems. Garth Brooks' fans pay their own way, while the NEA canvasses the Nation for politically correct ``art'' that needs a transfusion from the Treasury. If country music folks can spend their own money to enjoy the art they enjoy, I don't know why those who would patronize the ballet or the symphony or would somehow want to induce the support of politically correct art can't support their own version of what they enjoy in the field of art or performance. It is bad public policy to have these direct Federal subsidies of free expression. Third, Congress had no constitutional authority to create or fund the NEA. Although funding for the NEA is small in comparison to the overall budget, elimination of this agency sends the message that Congress is taking seriously its obligation to restrict the Federal Government's actions to the limited role envisioned by the Framers of the Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution is there any grant of authority that could reasonably be construed to include promotion of the arts. There has been a little debate about this. I would like to point out that during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, delegate Charles Pinckney introduced a motion calling for the Federal Government to subsidize the arts in the United States. Although the Founding Fathers were cultured men who knew firsthand of various European systems for public arts patronage, they overwhelmingly rejected Pinckney's suggestion because of their belief in limited, constitutional government. Accordingly, nowhere in its list of the powers enumerated and delegated to the Federal Government does the Constitution specify a power to subsidize the arts. It was considered and overwhelmingly rejected by the founders. Fourth, the arts receive funding from a variety of other sources, and they really don't need the NEA money. The arts in America have traditionally been funded by the private sector. Up until the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts in the mid-1960s, the arts flourished in this country. As a matter of fact, from my perspective, I don't think we have had a superior development of arts in America with Federal subsidies or Federal funding. And, if we can believe the criticism of federally funded art as being art which has been distorted in order to follow the dollars of the Federal bureaucrats, insincere art that comes as a result of an enticement to be politically correct and doesn't really represent the expression of the artist, it can't, by definition, be art which would be as sound in quality as art which would have emanated from the conviction of one to convey what one believed. As a matter of fact, if one was to compare the art generated prior to the NEA to art that has come after NEA, I don't think it would be any problem to see we have had great art throughout the history of the United States and worthy art for our consideration and our heritage in the absence of the subsidy of the Federal Government. The growth of private sector charitable giving in recent years has rendered the NEA funding relatively insignificant to the arts community. Private funding of the arts has been rising consistently since 1965. It is estimated that individuals alone will donate nearly $1 billion to the arts and humanities this year. That is the estimate of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Overall giving to the arts in 1996 totaled almost $10 billion, up from $6.5 billion in 1991, dwarfing the NEA's Federal subsidy. This 40- percent increase in private giving occurred during the same period that the NEA budget was reduced by 40 percent from approximately $170 million to $99.5 million. Thus, as conservatives had predicted, cutting the Federal NEA subsidy coincided with increased private support for the arts and culture. Let me make a point here. When the Government tries to elicit politically correct art through the NEA, it distorts what happens in the artistic community. It distorts it in the favor of a few who would gain a majority in Government. When the private marketplace supports art based on the quality of the art, I believe that is a superior way to do it, and I believe it is superior for art. It is a way of promoting the arts through the private sector and the marketplace which doesn't have the pernicious impact of promoting art which is not for art sake or not for communication sake, but is for the purpose of attracting from the bureaucrats a Federal subsidy. So not only is it better to have increasing funding coming from the private sector, in terms of providing adequate resources for the arts, but it provides the validity of which and the integrity of which I believe is much more to be desired. Let me give you an example. National Endowment for the Arts funding is just a drop in the bucket compared to giving to the arts by private citizens. In 1996, the Metropolitan Opera of New York received a $390,000 grant from the Endowment. That is a Federal subsidy of $390,000. That amounted to less than three-tenths of 1 percent of the opera's annual income of $133 million, and it amounts to less than the ticket revenue of a single sold-out performance. State and local governments outspend the NEA, and their funding of the arts has been increasing. The arts are a healthy industry, if you would call it such in this country. Employment and earnings of artists are rising. Art attendance is up in virtually every category, and the educational level of artists is rising, too. Ticket receipts for arts are rising. The National Endowment for the Arts is not operating in an efficient and effective manner. Let me just indicate to you we have a lot of waste in this program. There is a lot of overhead. There is a lot of ineffective spending here. The NEA is not subject, for example, to the Chief Financial Officers Act, the Government Corporations Control Act, or other strict accounting standards. The NEA has not been subject to any outside reviews of its management or accounting procedures. And-- listen to this--the NEA has an unusually high administrative cost for a Government agency which now approaches 20 percent. We talked about whether or not the Endowment's budget would carry funding to common, average people, wage earners. Twenty percent of it goes just to fund the salaries of bureaucrats in Washington, DC, who make the demand that politically correct art be produced by artists who would otherwise paint or otherwise provide other artistic work. We earlier learned that 20 percent of the budget goes to multimillion-dollar art agencies. So you have 20 percent that goes to the multimillion-dollar art agencies, another 20 percent that goes to the bureaucrats here in Washington, DC, and almost half the budget so far is in categories that clearly aren't going to benefit people, even if the nature of the art produced was valid and had the integrity that art ought to have. Then you have art critics saying that the remaining 60 percent is used to distort what would otherwise be produced in the marketplace. The National Endowment for the Arts recently wasted millions of dollars of taxpayers' money on a failed computer upgrade. And according to the NEA's own inspector general, a large percentage of grantees fail to document properly their use of Federal funds. So even when they send money out under the agenda of the bureaucracy and there are requirements there be documentation for the utilization of the funds, the NEA's own enforcement office, the inspector general, says, ``Well, a large percentage of the people never really explain adequately how they use the resource.'' The NEA is not operating in accordance with congressional intent. According to its mission statement, the NEA is to foster the excellence, diversity, and vitality of arts in the United States and to broaden public access to the arts. One-third of direct NEA grant funds go to six large cities. One-third of all the funds find their way to New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. The rest of the country is left holding the bag, having made these other locations substantial beneficiaries of the tax resources of America. Those six cities really leave much of the country without. One-third of the congressional districts fail to get any direct NEA funding. We have 435 districts. We have a lot of folks. So 140 districts, basically, get nothing. And, there is a large disparity in the amount of funding in districts that do receive funding. One-fifth of the direct NEA grants go to multimillion-dollar arts organizations. I already said that. Moreover, the NEA continues to fund objectionable art, continues to do so despite the attempts by Congress to limit such funding. I support and I appreciate the arts. Anybody who spent as much time with his mother standing behind him breathing down his neck as he sat on the piano bench and she counted the music and insisted on practicing has developed some appreciation for the arts. I don't play any of them well, but I manage to play three or four instruments. I have had the privilege of cutting a couple records and had a few people record songs I have written myself, but I never expected the Federal Government to come and subsidize what I do. Even the singing Senators don't want a subsidy for what we do. Of course, no one, not even the National Endowment, would construe what we do as art. But I support the arts and I know that arts enrich our lives and make us better citizens, arts that are created and developed by individuals on the basis of their own sense of communication and not as a source of chasing Federal funding. I believe we are challenged by the creative efforts and the talents of artists. Sometimes art doesn't have to be magnificent in order to be challenging or inspiring. I have seen inspiring art by children. I have seen inspiring art by those who are less fortunate than most of us, by those who are handicapped, because it represented some sincere expression from them as individuals. That art can teach us, it can help us, it can shape us, and it can challenge us. No doubt, the abundance and variety of artistic expression in America plays a significant role in shaping our culture. My position in regard to eliminating the NEA should not be interpreted as a repudiation of the arts. It should be interpreted as a means of supporting the arts. It must be clear that Congress should act pursuant only to its constitutional authority and not simply when Members of this body believe that it is a good idea for Congress to support something. Amidst all the rhetoric and all of the accusation lies a central salient fact: that the U.S. Government is a profoundly poor patron of the arts, it is a poor judge of beauty and it is an even poorer judge of inspiration. If we had at our disposal all the money in the world, it would not change this reality. Our resources should not be devoted toward subsidizing one kind of speech or expression over another, toward saying your sense of creativity is superior, your idea is superior to another. Rather, we should allow as many of those resources to remain in the hands of those who have earned them. When we have sought to elicit artistic achievement by governmental subsidy, according to some of the very best critics, we have distorted and profoundly impaired the ability of artists to operate. They have called our impact a corrosive impact on what would otherwise be art of greater integrity. With that in mind, I thank Senator Helms for his eloquent statement and his joining me in this amendment which would allow the Senate to join the House in declining to fund the National Endowment for the Arts. Mr. BENNETT addressed the Chair.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Indiana. I rise to indicate my opposition to a national individualized testing system that could lead to a one-size-fits-none curriculum dictated from Washington. Once you let Washington decide what kids should know, it will effectively control what and how they are taught. President Clinton's initiative for a federally funded testing system already is headed down this slippery slope--work on the tests is currently underway. Here is what we know about them: First, there is the eighth grade math test. Instead of measuring competence in basic computational skills directly, the test under construction would allow students to use calculators at all times. Some local parents, organizations, and States might decide they don't want to be controlled by a curriculum that only has reference to calculators. They might really want their young people to learn how to do mathematics absent calculators. Furthermore, the content being tested, which ignores algebra, would not promote higher achievement or hold up to international competition. Hundreds of mathematicians, teachers, school board members, parents and others recently signed a letter to President Clinton protesting the failed design of this math exam. In testing reading, when you have a national uniform test, one size fits none. The proposed fourth grade reading test is predicated on the same philosophy of reading that drives what is known as whole language instruction. Under this philosophy, it is not as important for children to learn the difference between nouns and verbs as it is for students to analyze an author's feelings about what is written. If a national test imposes a whole language approach to reading and rejects the phonics approach, what are we saying to parents about the potential for local control if those parents don't have a capacity to say we want our kids to learn reading by using phonics and we want a test that reinforces that kind of learning? Parents at the local level need to be able to decide if they want their fourth graders to learn the basics of the English language, not merely get in touch with an author's feelings. I understand that the Nation needs to know where we are academically as a nation. However, we already have a capacity to assess student performance on a national level. Since 1969, the National Assessment of Educational Progress has tested a representative sample of students in 4th, 8th, and 12th grades in reading, U.S. history, geography, math, and science. NAEP has provided the Nation an understanding of overall student performance while allowing decisions on appropriate tests for individual students to be made at the local level. While NAEP allows a measure of student performance by sampling, an individualized testing system threatens local control substantially. In my judgment, national uniform individualized testing will ultimately direct curriculum, curriculum which will become nationalized and uniform. This will take from the system the energy of the kind of curriculum that can be developed to suit local needs and will involve parents in education. The real test before us today is whether or not the President is willing to trust parents and teachers at the local level to determine what their children should learn. The single most important factor in educational achievement is parental involvement. It is more important than computers, than blackboards, than teacher salaries, than the nature of the school facility. Whether parents are actively engaged means a lot. If we nationalize our system of education for elementary and secondary students, we will have made it far less likely that parents will be actively involved. Parents can and should get good information about the progress of their children. That is possible at the State and local level. However, national, individualized tests would seriously threaten parental involvement and control and lead to more Washington intermeddling in our schools. I just want to indicate that I think nationalizing the testing process for our schools will drive us to a national curriculum and drive us to national teacher certification. I believe States ought to have the authority to certify teachers and develop a just curriculum, particularly as it relates to trying new methods of teaching. Many of America's schools are failing; they are failing to teach our kids how to read, write, and count; they are failing to offer them the skills to compete effectively in the information age; they are failing to teach them what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world. Involved parents controlling and directing schools that teach basic academic skills have been, and should always be, the foundation of our educational system. These are the building blocks that made America's schools the envy of the world. They are the standards upon which we must base their return to greatness.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of the China Policy Act of 1997. As an original cosponsor of the act, I believe this legislation provides the starting point for a much needed restructuring of United States-China relations. For too long, our approach to China has been one of passivity and appeasement. The Clinton administration seems willing to tolerate virtually any misbehavior--gross violations of human rights, arms deals with terrorist states, a headlong push to develop military capabilities that exceed any conceivable threat, even efforts to smuggle guns into the United States. This is no way to build a stable, peaceful, and constructive relationship. Our legislation offers a dramatically different approach. Under this bill, when China violates standards of decency or endangers vital American interests, there will be a response that is swift, predictable, and appropriate. This legislation is an important first step toward a policy that rewards and encourages constructive behavior, and discourages questionable activity. It points the way to a new and better era in United States-China relations. The 20th century has been the American century, and if the new century is to bear the same imprint, we must fashion a stable and constructive relationship with the People's Republic of China, which is pushing hard for global superpower status. One specific provision I have included in this bill protects the United States from Chinese diversion of sensitive technology from Hong Kong. Hong Kong has abided by international export control regimes and has benefited from preferential access to sensitive U.S. technology-- technology that can be used for military purposes. My provision simply does the following: if China diverts controlled technology from Hong Kong, or if United States officials are denied the opportunity to conduct post-shipment checks on location and end use of controlled items, then the United States shall apply the stricter export controls to Hong Kong presently applied to the rest of China. In addition, if United States officials are denied an opportunity to conduct a prelicense check on the end use and end user of a controlled item, then the export license for that item shall be denied. A May, 1997 GAO report on the export of controlled items to Hong Kong stated that effective monitoring is critical to prevent weapons and technology proliferation. The report identified pre-license checks and post-shipment verification as possible means to ensure the continued effectiveness of Hong Kong's export control system. Now that Hong Kong has reverted to Chinese control, China undoubtedly will attempt to use the port to divert technology and proliferate weapons. Prosecutions for illegal shipments of arms-related commodities in Hong Kong have grown dramatically in recent years, from 65 cases in 1994 to 250 last year. One Hong Kong firm, Cheong Yee, was sanctioned by the United States last May for helping Iran obtain chemical weapons. The technology flow to Hong Kong is a significant national security risk if China compromises the integrity of Hong Kong's export control system. Chinese front companies in Hong Kong already have been identified with efforts to acquire controlled technologies for illicit export to countries of proliferation concern, according to United States and Hong Kong officials. China has refused to sign many of the export control regimes by which Hong Kong historically has abided. The old restrictions are kept in place only from a sense of moral obligation, states Brian Lo, Hong Kong's chief trade-licensing officer. Mr. President, moral obligation is flimsy stuff when you are dealing with the Communist leaders of Beijing. These are the leaders who attack their own young people in Tiananmen Square, persecute Christians, and proliferate weapons to terrorist states which target U.S. citizens around the world. In the face of this growing proliferation risk, the Clinton administration has been relaxing America's export control regulations. Just this week, a bipartisan report issued by the House National Security Committee stated that the changes made to U.S. export controls contributed to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery as well as the development of advanced conventional weapons. The number of export licenses reviewed each year for national security reasons has fallen from 150,000 in the mid-1980's to less than 8,000 today. The world may have become a safer place, but the international arena is still threatening. Clearly, it is time for the United States to take aggressive steps which protect United States national security interests and limit the ability of potential enemies to develop weapons of mass destruction. I am proud to be a cosponsor of the China Policy Act and believe that the provisions contained therein make a significant contribution to the United States-China debate. I urge the Senate's prompt consideration and passage of this bill.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of the China Policy Act of 1997. As an original cosponsor of the act, I believe this legislation provides the starting point for a much needed restructuring of United States-China relations. For too long, our approach to China has been one of passivity and appeasement. The Clinton administration seems willing to tolerate virtually any misbehavior--gross violations of human rights, arms deals with terrorist states, a headlong push to develop military capabilities that exceed any conceivable threat, even efforts to smuggle guns into the United States. This is no way to build a stable, peaceful, and constructive relationship. Our legislation offers a dramatically different approach. Under this bill, when China violates standards of decency or endangers vital American interests, there will be a response that is swift, predictable, and appropriate. This legislation is an important first step toward a policy that rewards and encourages constructive behavior, and discourages questionable activity. It points the way to a new and better era in United States-China relations. The 20th century has been the American century, and if the new century is to bear the same imprint, we must fashion a stable and constructive relationship with the People's Republic of China, which is pushing hard for global superpower status. One specific provision I have included in this bill protects the United States from Chinese diversion of sensitive technology from Hong Kong. Hong Kong has abided by international export control regimes and has benefited from preferential access to sensitive U.S. technology-- technology that can be used for military purposes. My provision simply does the following: if China diverts controlled technology from Hong Kong, or if United States officials are denied the opportunity to conduct post-shipment checks on location and end use of controlled items, then the United States shall apply the stricter export controls to Hong Kong presently applied to the rest of China. In addition, if United States officials are denied an opportunity to conduct a prelicense check on the end use and end user of a controlled item, then the export license for that item shall be denied. A May, 1997 GAO report on the export of controlled items to Hong Kong stated that effective monitoring is critical to prevent weapons and technology proliferation. The report identified pre-license checks and post-shipment verification as possible means to ensure the continued effectiveness of Hong Kong's export control system. Now that Hong Kong has reverted to Chinese control, China undoubtedly will attempt to use the port to divert technology and proliferate weapons. Prosecutions for illegal shipments of arms-related commodities in Hong Kong have grown dramatically in recent years, from 65 cases in 1994 to 250 last year. One Hong Kong firm, Cheong Yee, was sanctioned by the United States last May for helping Iran obtain chemical weapons. The technology flow to Hong Kong is a significant national security risk if China compromises the integrity of Hong Kong's export control system. Chinese front companies in Hong Kong already have been identified with efforts to acquire controlled technologies for illicit export to countries of proliferation concern, according to United States and Hong Kong officials. China has refused to sign many of the export control regimes by which Hong Kong historically has abided. The old restrictions are kept in place only from a sense of moral obligation, states Brian Lo, Hong Kong's chief trade-licensing officer. Mr. President, moral obligation is flimsy stuff when you are dealing with the Communist leaders of Beijing. These are the leaders who attack their own young people in Tiananmen Square, persecute Christians, and proliferate weapons to terrorist states which target U.S. citizens around the world. In the face of this growing proliferation risk, the Clinton administration has been relaxing America's export control regulations. Just this week, a bipartisan report issued by the House National Security Committee stated that the changes made to U.S. export controls contributed to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery as well as the development of advanced conventional weapons. The number of export licenses reviewed each year for national security reasons has fallen from 150,000 in the mid-1980's to less than 8,000 today. The world may have become a safer place, but the international arena is still threatening. Clearly, it is time for the United States to take aggressive steps which protect United States national security interests and limit the ability of potential enemies to develop weapons of mass destruction. I am proud to be a cosponsor of the China Policy Act and believe that the provisions contained therein make a significant contribution to the United States-China debate. I urge the Senate's prompt consideration and passage of this bill.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I am pleased to have this opportunity to have updated our appropriations legislation so that the traditional Hyde amendment, which forbids and prohibits the utilization of Federal funds in abortions, could be a part of what we are doing as it relates to HMO's. Government's role is to help people to respond to their highest and best in life. However, I don't believe the highest and best utilization of Federal funding would be to fund the destruction of children in this country. For a long time, the Congress of the United States has agreed that Federal funds would not be used in conducting abortions. Yet, as developments transpire in health care, and as we change from one sort of service delivery system to another, old policies might need clarification to make sure that we do not change the prohibition on Federal funding for abortions. Let me explain. Twenty-one years ago, Congressman Henry Hyde offered an amendment to the then Labor-HEW bill to ban Federal funding of abortions. Every year since then, Congress has adopted that amendment. While there is substantial disagreement in America over the practice of abortion--very substantial disagreement--there has never been majority support in this body for Federal funding of abortions. As a matter of fact, there has been substantial agreement that we should not force Americans to pay with their Federal tax dollars for elective abortions. Many individuals simply feel that as a matter of conscience, they should not be participants in the destruction of unborn lives. I happen to be one of those individuals. The opposition to Federal funding for abortion has been so consistent in Congress and in America that normally the Hyde amendment is just included in Labor-HHS appropriations bills and passed with no discussion. In fact, that traditional Hyde amendment is in the bill which we are debating today. However, after 21 years, the language needs to be clarified, and I say ``clarified'' because we are not expanding it nor weakening it, we are just making its meaning crystal clear. To keep up with rapidly changing health care delivery modifications in Medicaid, and to prevent misinterpretations of the life-of-the- mother exception, a technical change to the Hyde amendment is necessary if the amendment is to continue to prevent Federal tax dollars from subsidizing elective abortions. Such a subsidy would be a mandate on the U.S. taxpayers to pay for elective abortions. It would literally be an affront to the American people to take their money and demand that it be used to destroy unborn children. Such a Federal taxpayer subsidy would further sear the American conscience. It would offend the moral sensitivity of a great many Americans. The Hyde amendment in its current form may allow such subsidies to occur in today's health care environment. Just as other laws have had to be tweaked to function appropriately with HMO's, so does the Hyde amendment. The Medicaid Program has traditionally been a fee-for-service health care delivery system, and the Hyde amendment was written with that kind of system in mind. Under the system, it was relatively easy for the Government to block any utilization of Federal tax resources for subsidizing abortion. However, as the Medicaid structure is rapidly changing, many States are experimenting with delivery systems such as managed care, in which Federal funds are used to help pay for premiums for complete benefit packages instead of reimbursing for specific procedures after the fact. According to HCFA, 9 percent of Medicaid patients were served in managed care plans in 1991. By 1996, that figure had risen to 40 percent, and it is important to make sure that those health care packages, which are purchased with Federal resources, do not include the destruction of children in elective abortions. The use of Medicaid managed care is expected to continue to increase in the future, and there is a legitimate concern that since the Federal Government no longer receives billings for specific medical services under these managed care contracts, but simply pays for a portion of the overall premium, that some States might allow coverage of abortion on demand with these federally funded contracts. For example, under a fee-for-service structure, we would never allow a bill from a provider to be paid for an elective abortion. However, when you are paying for medical services in advance in a lump sum to an organization like an HMO, and in return for that lump sum they are meeting the medical needs of individuals, you don't get individual bills. So there would be no way to make sure that you weren't paying for elective abortions in such a setting, absent the clarifications which we are placing in the law today. Federal subsidy of elective abortions has never been the intent of Congress. The amendment which we have adopted today will make sure that we continue to state with clarity that, regardless of the method of payment for Medicaid services, Federal resources are not to be used to destroy the lives of unborn children in elective abortions. How will this new change apply in practice? Federal funds are currently used to pay the premium or capitation fees to enroll Medicaid patients in managed care plans. Without any accountability to the Federal Government, those plans could routinely provide abortion alongside other benefits as part of their complete packages. The HMO gets an amount of money. It provides a complete package of health care service. Technically, under this payment structure, the Federal funds are never used to pay for a particular service or a particular abortion, but, in practice, they could be used to subsidize abortions beyond those permitted by the Hyde amendment. To prevent this from happening, today we have updated the Hyde amendment to specify that States may not use Federal money to purchase health care coverage that includes abortion coverage. Precedent exists for clarifying such a Federal funding limitation. Congress already considered this indirect funding situation when it gave almost unanimous approval to similar language in the Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act which Senator Dorgan and I introduced earlier this year. President Clinton signed this legislation on April 30, so we have an existing law on the books that deals with this issue. The Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act stated that no funds could be appropriated for the purpose of paying, directly or indirectly, for health benefit coverage for assisted suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing. We are using similar health benefits coverage language in this bill. In the abortion context itself, we have precedent, in that a similar provision was included in the so-called kid care legislation passed in the reconciliation legislation which the President signed on August 5. Congressional leaders and the administration negotiated this language, which the Senate approved by a vote of 85 to 15. Also, similar language on abortion funding was approved by the 104th Congress without controversy as a part of Medicaid revisions in the fiscal year 1996 OBRA bill which the President vetoed for reasons unrelated to this issue. It is important to point out that we should not have the wrong incentives in our Medicaid Program, and it is true that it is cheaper to abort a child than it is to care for the mother through the pregnancy and to deliver the child. I would be very leery about having a system where the Federal Government provided an amount of money to an HMO which, having a financial incentive to do the cheaper thing, aborts the child rather than encouraging the mother to have the child and provide for delivery. And similarly, I have serious reservations about the potential for assisted suicide, where the HMO could deliver lethal drugs to a patient and, as a result, reduce the cost of doing business. We want to have incentives to life and incentives to health, especially for HMO's who might otherwise be tempted by financial situations not to encourage individuals to fight the fight for life. Whenever the lives of unborn children are destroyed, I believe there is a toll on the American conscience, and I think it is substantial. When Government provides an opportunity for abortion with Federal funds, we certainly find ourselves in a serious situation where the moral fabric of the country would be stretched, if not permanently torn. I am pleased today that the Senate has agreed to say that we should not provide the opportunity for elective abortions to be funded by Federal resources, even in the HMO setting. In each such instance where Government is making a judgment, it needs to make a judgment that favors life, that respects the lives of children, that provides for the dignity of the lives of older Americans as well. Any time we unduly disregard and devalue life, we have carved something important out of the American personality. If we are to indelibly stamp the next century with American values, the values of opportunity and freedom, as we have in this century, if we are to be a leader in the world, as we have in this century--and there are hundreds of millions of people that are free today around the globe because we have been strong and we have been free and we have been dedicated to freedom--we need all of our resources, we need the moral fabric of America, and we cannot destroy it or unduly sear the conscience of Americans by requiring the payment for elective abortions out of Federal tax dollars. I say as well that we need our children. As we look to the next century, America will not survive without our children. Destroying children is contradictory to preparing for the future. I believe that the assault on the sanctity of life is a moral crisis and that any use of taxpayer funds to pay for such an assault and perpetuate the destruction of America's children would be disabling to the moral compasses of all Americans. When he wrote on slavery in America, Thomas Jefferson, the South's first and greatest President, confronted the great moral issue of his time. Jefferson said of slavery, ``I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that his justice cannot sleep forever.'' Sometimes I tremble when I reflect on abortion's terrible toll on lives and the siphoning off of our moral indignation and our capacity to prepare for the next century. I am pleased the Senate today has taken a very clear step in saying there will be no Federal funding of elective abortions in the Medicaid HMO setting, just as we have for over 20 years provided that there would be no Federal funding for elective abortions in Medicaid fee-for- service programs. I thank the Chair, and I thank the managers of the bill. Mr. SPECTER addressed the Chair.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania and the Senator from Iowa for their allowing me to bring this amendment to the floor at this time. Amendment No. 1061 (Purpose: To provide for limitations with respect to expenditures for abortions)

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, as a result of this amendment having been agreed to by both sides, I urge the adoption of the amendment.