United States Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of protecting funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) during a House floor session yesterday evening, July 23.
Republican Josh Brecheen had proposed two amendments to the Fiscal Year 2025 Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act that would have slashed funding for both agencies by nearly a quarter, cutting $48 million each from their proposed budgets. The Oklahoma representative has requested some $50 billion in cuts to “woke, weaponized, and wasteful” government spending in acknowledgment of the nation’s purported debt of approximately $34 trillion, targeting environmental and endangered animal conservation efforts, the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, and funding for Ukraine as well as the World Health Organization, among other recipients.
If we’d just stop putting good money after bad in states like Oklahoma that don’t pull their own weight we’d have the cuts he’s looking for.
I know, that punishes the poor folks in those states. Seeing as how Repubs are diverting (or trying to) those funds away from the intended recipient though, I feel it’s fair game to at least have on the table.
What we need to do is have federal agencies that just go right around the state government and set up offices in little towns in Oklahoma that provision aid directly to qualifying residents without letting the bullshit state politicians get in the way. With as much corruption and self dealing as goes on in red state agencies that we’d be cutting out I’d bet there would still be a cost savings.
