Arts Advocates Head to Capitol Hill to Ask Congress for Bigger NEA Budget

This time, the advocates will propose $180 million in NEA spending in the 2011 budget, Americans for the Arts spokeswoman Liz Bartolomeo said Wednesday. That would be a 7.5% hike, vaulting the agency over its previous high-water mark of $176 million in 1992, but still far short of the $272 million needed to equal the buying power the NEA had 18 years ago, before it was nearly dismantled amid that time's "culture wars." Obama is holding pat on the arts, proposing the same $161.3 million for the NEA that he did a year ago.