1700% Return on Investment?! Yes, Please!
If you lent a friend $1 today and one year later, they gave you $17.75, you'd take that arrangement, right? Of course you would! Unless you are a Republican. Yup, the GOP is at it again. The Spending Reduction Act that was released by the Republican Study Committee earlier this month proposes to slash funding for arts and culture. In these economic times, I can certainly respect lawmakers attempting to make cuts and balance a budget through the adoption of new or revised policy. However, in their most recently proposed bill, the GOP is way off base. You see, federal support of the arts through partial matches to state agencies, organizations such as the NEA and National Endowment for the Humanities, and other national arts programs totals 1.6 billion dollars a year. That may seem like a lot, but not in comparison to the amount of revenue that the arts provide to federal, state, and local governments and businesses, which equals upwards of $30 billion annually. Yeah. There is that 1700% return on investment I was talking about. And if any Republicans on the Republican Study Committee are reading this blog and want to argue with me about this, here is the math to figure that out:
(Return on Investment-Initial Cost of Investment)/(Initial Cost of Investment), multiply the answer by 100 to get percentage.
($30 billion - $ 1.6 billion)/($1.6 billion)=17.75*100=1775% return on your investment.
Sorry GOP. You can't argue with facts. (Although, you will probably try) The proposals to cut arts funding as part of this bill are absolutely ridiculous and are extremely dangerous. Not only will economies lose monies that the arts provide, but you'll certainly be hurting for the tax monies from those 5.7 million people whose jobs you want to cut. Then you'll have to start proposing crazy things like cutting your own salaries or stop initiating pointless wars. But that's another blog post altogether...
Here is the exact language from the bill:
TITLE V—PROGRAM ELIMI NATIONS AND RELATED PROVISIONS
Subtitle A—Provisions Relating to Program Eliminations
SEC. 501. PROGRAM ELIMINATIONS.
(a) IN GENERAL.—No funds appropriated or otherwise available to any Federal department or agency may be obligated or expended for any program or other purpose described in subsection (b).
Some of the programs listed in subsection (b) include: The Save America's Treasures Program, The National Heritage Areas Program, The National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (!?!), The U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation.
Also included in the proposed cuts in later parts of the bill are: Arts in Education (as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965), The Special Olympics Sports Empowerment Program, the Head Start Program, and many other cultural programs.
http://rsc.jordan.house.gov/UploadedFiles/JORDAN_004_xml.pdf (link to the full bill)
Thoughts from the head of the Republican Study Committee on the Spending Reduction Act:
http://rsc.jordan.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=220713
And the LA Times article in the subject....
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/01/republican-study-group-proposes-cutting-arts-funds.html
It appears this constituency is only looking at the face value of funding the arts. Both the present and future value of this investment is outstanding! A 1700% return on investment! How can you argue with numbers like that? The epidemic of ignorance is running rampant on Capitol Hill.
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