I spotted this on Westport Now's website: Arts Reps to Candidates: Remember Us in Washington. Approximately 100 people representing various arts groups in the area asked both Jim Himes and Dan Debicella to talk to them about their intent to support the arts as the representative for Connecticut's Fourth District. It was nice of them to invite Debicella. It really was. Because Debicella hopes to join a Republican caucus in Washington that voted en masse against the stimulus and its $50 million in funding for the arts. When Wilton's Weir Farm received stimulus funding to convert space to a working artists' studio, Washington Republicans named the project one of the 100 most wasteful stimulus projects in the entire nation. Debicella himself calls all stimulus spending "pork," revealing not only hostility for the arts funding going to the district he hopes to represent, but a very peculiar understanding of what constitutes "pork." He wants to repeal it all, of course. Even though it's nearly all been spent already. And Debicella says that NEA funding is DOA with him.
"Increased public funding is not there," Debicella said. "NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) money is not there. Anybody who tells you that is not telling you the truth."
With its Democratic majority, Congress not only approved Obama's increase for the NEA in the 2010 federal budget but raised it to $167.5 million, more than an 8 percent jump from the previous year. The NEA, which distributes money to state and regional agencies, and to nonprofit organizations, also received $50 million for job creation under the stimulus program, and $38 million for education. In 2009, it received $155 million in appropriations, a 7 percent increase from 2008.
So this paragraph in the Westport Now story struck me as a perfect metaphor for the overall approach of Democrats and Republicans for government support for the arts.
While both candidates stressed their time-honored love and support for the arts (Himes' wife Mary sits on the Cultural Alliance's board, and Debicella spoke of his high school involvement with theater and music), their methods of support during a period of economic downturn were strikingly different.
Strikingly different? You can say that again. On the one hand, we have $50 million in stimulus funding (which not one Republican in congress supported), and two successive increases in funding for arts and arts education under Democrats. And what can the GOP nominee offer instead? His "high school involvement with theater and music." In other words:
No contest. (image from the Shelton High School yearbook)
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