Tom Coburn and his wilderness of ideas
UPDATE, 1:55 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6: MISCHIEF WINS, “SMALL POTATOES” LOSE: I didn’t think he could do it, but he did. Today the U.S. Senate, by a ridiculous 73-24 vote, passed Sen. Tom Coburn’s amendment to the economic stimulus bill to bar anything with even the faintest whiff of culture from getting any stimulus money. Here’s the requisite passage from Congressional Quarterly:
“Lawmakers also voted 73-24 to adopt a Tom Coburn , R-Okla., amendment to place tighter restrictions facilities that can be built with money from the bill. The Coburn amendment would bar spending on casinos, aquariums, zoos, golf courses, swimming pools, stadiums, community parks, museums, theaters, art centers, and highway beautification projects.
“That’s broader than prohibition in the House-passed bill, which applied only to casinos, aquariums, zoos, golf courses and swimming pools.”
The vote is astonishing, and preposterous, and I can only guess that the amendment was passed with so little thought or debate simply because the Senate is in a pedal-to-the-metal rush to get this thing off the assembly line and onto the streets. Coburn may be a fool, but he’s a canny fool — he knows how the system works, and he knows how and when to manipulate it. This ugly bit of mischief could still disappear from the final bill, of course, but now it’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of ruckus-raising. It’s officially time to get mad, get on the horn, bug your congressional delegation and get something done about this.
News flashes from all sorts of fronts today about the latest Molotov cocktail from Sen. Tom Coburn, the Republican from Oklahoma known for his quixotic attempts to deliver America from the clutches of common sense. It was Coburn, Oregonians might recall, whose threat of filibuster scuttled last year’s otherwise certain passage of the Lewis & Clark Mount Hood Wilderness Act. That act finally passed the Senate last month, as part of a broader wilderness bill, on a 73-21 vote — over Coburn’s objections.
This time out Coburn’s tackling the omnibus economic bailout plan — surely a target for some tough critical thinking: How many Dutch boys with their fingers in the dike does it take to keep the thing from bursting, anyway? Unfortunately, it’s not just Coburn’s finger that’s all wet. His Amendment No. 175 to the economic stimulus bill is tough, and it’s critical. But it’s utterly lacking in thinking.
Here’s how Coburn proposes to guard your pocketbook:
“None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, arts center, or highway beautification project, including renovation, remodeling, construction, salaries, furniture, zero-gravity chairs, big screen televisions, beautification, rotating pastel lights, and dry heat saunas.”
Note that. No money for museums, theaters, arts centers, aquariums, zoos, highway beautification, apparently any sort of beautification at all. I’m not really sure what a rotating pastel light is, but none of that, either. Fortunately I don’t golf. But I do like a good sauna now and again.
It’s easy to laugh this off as just another crackpot amendment that’s going nowhere — except that Coburn has a history of making this sort of thing stick, at least temporarily. I doubt it’ll work this time, because with the Democratic gains in the Senate from the last election he’s lost his biggest tool, which was his ability to forestall a 60 percent Senate vote to halt filibuster. His power has always been the power to make mischief, not the power to actually create anything.
Still, it’s a very good idea to call your senators (the Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121) or zip off an email to them. If you live in Oregon, that means Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley. If you live in Washington, it means Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray. If you live in another state, check here for contacts. The danger isn’t that anywhere near a majority of senators agree with Coburn. The danger is that, in their eagerness to get some sort of broad-stroke stimulus package passed as quickly as possible, a majority will be willing to horse-trade away this “small potatoes” stuff. In D.C., that’s how mischief’s made.
It seems silly to even have to bring it up, but here goes: Museums and theaters and aquariums are part of the economy, too. And they’re a potentially multiple-payoff part of the economy. They don’t just create jobs for themselves, they feed tourism, hospitality, construction (which means such things as logging and mining and steelmaking). Increasingly, in our information-driven society, the arts play a big role in driving entire regional economies: People move to cities specifically for their arts scenes. That’s certainly true of Portland. Oh: And all that “beautification”? It creates good, lasting things. The picture at the top of this post is of Timberline Lodge. It’s on Mt. Hood, and it was built during the Great Depression as a project of the federal government’s Works Progress Administration.
The WPA was good to the arts, and in return the arts were good to America. From murals in small-town post offices to architectural treasures like Timberline Lodge to theater and dance and music projects to photographic documentation of the Depression to the wonderful, sadly unfinished, collection of writings about American foodways, our previous mass economic stimulus package had the good sense to recognize that an “economy” is only a financial blueprint of a whole society.
Am I nervous about the economic stimulus plan? You bet. But I’m a lot more nervous about the Tom Coburns of the world than I am about helping a museum keep from falling into the abyss of economic failure. Keeping our shared culture alive, I’m confident, is a very good idea.
February 4th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
[...] bookmarks tagged dry Tom Coburn and his wilderness of ideas saved by 5 others stephiliz bookmarked on 02/04/09 | [...]
February 5th, 2009 at 8:08 am
Thanks for the post and the reminder to contact our senators. Despite being in the midst of the Great Economic Befuddlement, Coburn apparently can’t pass an opportunity to trivialize the issues.
February 5th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Typical. Coburn has his own anti-gravity chamber, which he apparently lives in, and he won’t even pop for a few chairs.
February 5th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Well as you suspected, my sources are telling me that the f^@$!ng Coburn amendment won’t even be considered, and we know that Wyden and Merkley would never consider such a thing, so we’re not sure an e-blast is necessary. But we do still want people to contact their Senators to vote in favor of the stimulus package! Easy to do here: http://capwiz.com/artsusa/issues/alert/?alertid=12426636&type=CO
February 5th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Perhaps the PCS PlayGroup can use the Coburn amendment as a jump-off point for a playwriting exercise: Write a one act play that takes place in a casino (or aquarium) and involves a zero-gravity chair, a dry sauna and rotating pastel lights. A theme related to beautification preferred.
February 5th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
I think MTC’s hit on the ideal response. And I’m looking forward to that evening of new plays.
February 6th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Well now I’m really mad. My sources were wrong, and I made a mistake. Just a few minutes ago, the U.S. Senate voted to accept, by a vote of 73-24, the Coburn Amendment. The Senate final bill passage is still unclear, although it is expected to take place later tonight. Next week they will have a House-Senate conference committee to agree to a final version for the President to sign.
February 6th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Well, the good side first: Just because it’s not in the stimulus bill, doesn’t mean it might not pass later. And for that matter, arts funding may return in the House-Senate conference committee, as you said.
The bad side is simply that Obama winning the election did not mean that business as usual in America was over. The stupid, the corrupt, the narrow — they still govern us. To paraphrase William Stafford, it would take 6 million tiny perfect moves to correct things. We might manage a couple as things stand. One election can’t fix a democracy, especially one as damaged as ours is. It’s just an invitation to continue working at it.
But all I’m doing here is trying to cheer myself up! Or gird my loins (yikes!) or something like that.
February 6th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
This is an outrageous turn of events. One can only hope that there is a plan afoot to scuttle the amendment in the conference committee (or at least the parts that apply to the art and I’m not going to worry about the casinos). Another letter to our Senators seems in order.
February 6th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Essentially DeMint, Coburn and opponents are trying to unmoor relief from anything that smacks of Works Progress Admin or, egads, socialism—hence no parks, highway projects, or other major public infrastructure.
This is not just bad for the arts, but detrimental to parks and community centers— prohibiting them from receiving funds for transportation infrastructure, special education services, childcare services, and community development block grant programs. It cripples development unless it’s already underway. Clearly a swipe at “wasteful” urban policy from someone claiming to be from the “real America.’
This is an ignorant, divisive attempt to deny citizens their cultural rights and dismiss the major role that parks, museums, theaters, and other cultural and educational institutions play in the economic health and welfare of our cities, towns, and the nation as a whole.
Sadly, Merkley and Wyden bought it. Where’s our courage in the Senate?
February 7th, 2009 at 7:15 am
Politically, of course, there’s a numbers game at work. The number is 60, and to get there the D’s needed Snowe, Collins and Spector. If those three wanted this amendment as a pre-condition to voting for the package, and it seems they did, then the D’s were going to have to give it to them. Wyden and Merkley will get another chance at this stuff.
February 7th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Hi there Art Scatterers, I’m in Kansas City Missouruh thank you very much where the splendid Nelson Gallery has already cut its hours and is open now I think only five days a week, and cut staff as well. I came in from seeing a quite good play at Kansas City Rep–Arabian Nights it was, with the Berkeley Rep cast–and found an alert from Americans for the Arts on my laptop and discovered that both Merkeley and Wyden had voted for this goddam amendment. I fired off letters forthwith and urge all readers of Art Scatter to do likewise. Because, Barry, while you’re dead right that those two will get another chance at this stuff, if they don’t hear from their constituents they may not vote right, or left depending on how you view it.
February 7th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Good point, Martha. Ah, Kansas in mid-winter!
February 7th, 2009 at 11:33 am
There is a very good tool for sending pre-composed (but still editable) letters to Wyden and Merkley at http://www.capwiz.com/artsusa/issues/alert/?alertid=12612041&type=TA.
February 7th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
[...] reported earlier on Art Scatter and elsewhere, the U.S. Senate pulled a nasty Friday surprise by voting 73-24 in [...]
February 7th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Well Barry, I’m in Missouri not Kansas and it was 65 degrees today. On another arts funding note, the chair of the Kansas City Ballet board arranged for a fundraising shopping spree at Tiffany’s late yesterday afternoon and practically nobody came. She sent out an e-mail chastising senior staff at the BALLET for not attending for the love of Mike.
February 7th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
yes, but can’t you SEE Kansas from where you are?
February 8th, 2009 at 9:59 am
On a clear day…but it doesn’t look like Kansas any more!
February 16th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
[...] job. First, on Friday, Culture Shock’s Culture Jock came across with the news that the Coburn Amendment, which would have denied any money for arts and cultural purposes in the economic stimulus bill, [...]
February 16th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
To have any impact like the WPA for the Arts, the NEA first has to re-commit to supporting artists. The NEA had an effective program, the Visual Artists Fellowship Program which was tragically cancelled by Congress in 1995.
Currently, the NEA’s support for the visual arts is diluted. Grants are made to arts education programs where the curriculum is controlled by bureaucrats with little art background. States offer some direct support, like Florida, which offers annual grants of $5,000 each, not nearly the career impact of the $25,000 of a national fellowship.
Even with some stimulus money to the arts, visual artists will continue to be marginalized. Keep talking/writing to your senators, and to the NEA–Restore the Visual Arts Fellowship Program!