Congress completes 2012 budget, final passage soon
From our friends at the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies:
Congressional leaders have reached agreement on a so-called “megabus” appropriations bill combining all outstanding funding measures for Fiscal Year 2012, including $146.255 million for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the same level proposed by the Obama administration in its budget request sent to Congress last February. In August, the House of Representatives voted to fund the NEA at $135 million. The Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee this fall had approved its version of the funding measure with the arts endowment’s budget held to the 2011 level of $155 million.
The mega-appropriations legislation combines nine individual bills into a single funding measure. Once the comprehensive package is finally passed by both House and Senate it will include provision to apply an across the board cut of .189 % applied to every program in the bill.
In addition to arts endowment funding through the Interior Appropriations legislation, the bill includes Department of Education funding with $24.593 million for the arts education model development program grants, down slightly from $25.5 million in 2011. That funding was proposed for inclusion in a larger block of grants for program innovations, combing a large number of education programs with discretionary funding. The congressional action in the 2012 appropriations rejected that proposal for the arts education money.
