Americans for the Arts Action Fund PAC has released its 2016 Congressional Arts Report Card rating members of Congress on their support for the arts. Many lobby groups do such rankings as a way of “holding politicians accountable” for how they vote on issues the lobbyists care about. The rankings are then used to support or punish those who vote or don’t vote on issues the lobbyists designate and move agendas forward.
The rankings can be influential with the lobby groups’ members. Lobbyists use the ranking to determine who and how much money they give to members of Congress and get their members to contribute to candidates. PACs like the NRA can, through their influence, channel millions of dollars towards favored pols.
And the arts lobby? There’s this disclaimer in the Arts Report Card:
Unfortunately there were no specific recorded legislative floor votes that focused solely on the arts. As a result, the Arts Action Fund could not assign weighted grades to each Representative and Senator this year.
So how did AftAAFPAC score members of Congress?
We took a composite of their previous rating (when applicable) with a series of current “Arts Indicators” that they pro-actively participated in to assign a “Thumbs Up” as a symbol of confidence that these Members of Congress have demonstrated pro-arts support. These designations will also serve as a guide in distributing $100,000 in Arts Action Fund PAC gifts to incumbent candidates. If a Member did not receive a “Thumbs Up,” it means that they either previously earned a poor rating or did not take substantial pro-arts actions during the current Congress.
And what were these “arts indicators”? In the house, five of the 12 were for co-signing “Dear Colleague” letters supporting funding. Three were for membership in arts-related caucuses. Two were for votes (one for voting to “reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now called the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), replacing No Child Left Behind,” and the other to “make permanent three critical charitable tax extenders, including the IRA Charitable Rollover.”). Another indicator was for “participating in the 2016 annual Congressional Arts Competition recognizing high school visual arts students from each participating U.S. Congressional district.” And the last was an “extra credit” category recognizing “exemplary pro-arts leadership.” The Senate ranking is similar – five letters, membership in one caucus, and two votes plus the extra-credit category.
Whew. Co-signing letters? Showing up for high school show and tell? Hardcore stuff. What do you get if you pass these onerous tests and are highly ranked? Perhaps a piece of $100,000 in Arts PAC gifts, which ain’t nothing but it’s not going to move the needle much.
On highly partisan issues, Congresspeople are scored for dozens of votes. Heritage Action for America PAC for example, ranks members on 57 votes or bills. Lobbyists watching and scoring so many votes have clout on moving their agendas. On issues they care about they get bills and legislation proposed and passed on many fronts.
And the arts? No arts legislation proposed or voted on. Sure appropriations for the NEA and NEH were 
approved as part of larger spending bills. But even there, as the chart to the right shows, the NEA budget over the past 32 years has not fared well. As the Report Card says, if the NEA’s 1984 budget had kept pace it would be $580 million this year instead of $148 million. By lobbying standards, arts lobbying has failed, with not enough clout even to get a bill that has something to do with the arts before Congress this year.
Of course there are many important issues before Congress, and Republicans were determined in this session not to move legislation forward. But are there really no arts or cultural issues or policies important to supporters of the arts that could have got a voice in the 114th Congress besides arts education and NEA/NEH budgets?
Behind most political lobbying efforts is usually some bigger vision. Political lobbyists work on accomplishing that vision on many fronts as they build constituencies. The arts are supposed to be big on vision. Unfortunately that vision didn’t appear in the official records of the 114th. Perhaps erosion of the NEA/NEH budgets is because arguing for funding for the arts has been our main issue rather than a consequence of a bigger, more urgent and inspiring vision. According to the Arts Report Card, the arts are a bipartisan issue at a time when division is the culture. If the arts are ever going to mean more to more people this seems like an opportunity to me.
Advocacy for the Arts Prevails Despite a Politically Divided Congress
In this heated election season, there have been some recent blog posts debating the state of arts policy, the political clout of advocacy groups such as the Americans for the Arts Action Fund* (Arts Action Fund) and its PAC, and the criteria for evaluating the arts-related federal legislative activity found in our newly released 2016 Congressional Arts Report Card. Given the complex nature of arts policy and advocacy in the United States, and the fact that some of these posts offer incomplete understandings of the history and present day success of federal arts advocacy, which undoubtedly come from an earnest desire for the arts to play a bigger role in the realm of public policy—it seemed like a good time to highlight some of the realities of policymaking and advocacy today, and to celebrate some of the big wins we’ve had this past year.
Our Congressional Arts Report Card identifies two major pieces of enacted legislation with recorded votes as well as several other advocacy efforts to secure important provisions inside larger bills to advance nonprofit arts organizations, artists, and arts education. A lot of this legislative work is the result of united advocacy efforts that the Americans for the Arts Action Fund and its 85+ Arts Advocacy Day partners accomplished. Partners include the League of American Orchestras, The United States Conference of Mayors, American Alliance of Museums, and Grantmakers in the Arts.
It’s important to note that the impact of these provisions is not lessened by the fact that they do not exist as standalone bills, and the fact that they are rolled into other legislation is not an indicator of a lack of effective advocacy happening on Capitol Hill. There are very few, if any, standalone enacted bills in Congress anymore. Even the 12 annual federal appropriation bills have to be clustered together in Omnibuses or Minibuses, months after their fiscal years have already begun. That is an unfortunate reality of our current political climate, and one thing it means is that the most effective way to get things done today is often to make sure our arts issues are taken care of inside of larger policies or appropriation bills that move through Congress.
As we approach the 2016 election and in honor of October’s National Arts & Humanities Month, let’s celebrate some top highlights of arts advocacy accomplishments this cycle:
• The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is a decade-in-the-making re-write of K-12 federal education law, and a significant victory for arts advocates. Critically, ESSA includes the arts in its definition of a “well-rounded education,” ensuring eligibility for federal funding of Arts Ed programs. ESSA also provides programmatic and funding opportunities for schools to transform STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) into STEAM by now adding the Arts.
• Also a decade-in-the-making, Congress finally passed a permanent extension of the IRA Charitable Rollover, a key provision for charitable giving. This provision will now provide development officers at nonprofit arts organizations the assurance of encouraging their senior donors to roll their IRA distributions to nonprofit arts organizations. Charitable contributions to nonprofit charities make up roughly one-third of the revenue of nonprofit arts organizations. As charitable giving in the U.S. continues to increase, totaling over $17 billion in 2015 in giving to the arts and culture, it is critical that these charitable giving incentives continue.
• Just three years ago, the House Subcommittee on the Interior and Related Agencies, in charge of funding the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), proposed a massive 49% cut in funding. Yes, there are still active, current proposed bills to eliminate certain programs. And yet this year, that same Subcommittee is now proposing a nearly $2 million increase. You may want to dismiss this as a small amount of money, but what it represents is a more important political reversal in policy. This is where our collective political clout helps to leverage these successful lobbying efforts. These issues are also playing out during mark-ups in subcommittee with voice votes, not in the well of the House with individually recorded votes. We provided over a dozen examples of these kinds of arts advocacy efforts with Members of Congress in the Congressional Arts Report Card.
• Appropriations advocacy for the arts extends far beyond the NEA. Total federal funds for a range of important services, including the Office of Museum Services, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, exceed $900 million annually. We lobby to have hundreds of million dollars more made available by securing arts eligibility clauses in community development, labor, education, transportation, tourism, health care, and many other federal programs.
The Congressional Arts Report Card also highlights some targeted arts bills that were introduced by House and Senate leaders in Congress. Many of these bills were considered in committee and gained cosponsors. Others even passed unanimously on the House or Senate floor. For example, arts bills like reauthorizing the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts which passed the Senate under unanimous consent on June 16, 2016, were voted on, but because there was no roll call, there is not a “recorded vote” to analyze. Although it doesn’t have the same accountability, what it does have is wide, broad, unanimous support and it took advocacy to make that happen.
All of these intricacies probably make it clear how dysfunctional the appropriations process in Congress has become. The federal government nearly shut down again because of failure to act, averted with only a few days to spare—and Congress has passed just one of the 12 basic appropriations bills so far, despite the new fiscal year already beginning. It is a broken system, and working inside a broken system can often mean doing advocacy in ways that are less obvious than they used to be. The fact that there have been significant advances for the arts and arts education during this age of intense polarization is a testament to the unique bipartisan support for the arts.
There is often a misperception that “federal arts advocacy” refers only to “advocacy for the NEA.” But cultural policy and public funding for the arts extends far beyond the NEA, and that’s why we articulate a broader vision on the first page of the Congressional Arts Report Card. The Arts Action Fund wants to double federal arts funding to $1 per capita (up from 46 cents per capita), we want the White House to establish a cabinet level position for the arts and culture to advise the President, we want to fully implement the “well rounded education” provisions in ESSA, and we must minimally preserve or possibly even expand the charitable tax deduction incentives for giving to nonprofit arts groups.
Arts advocacy organizations in and of themselves do not provide the “clout” that moves these policy priorities forward. Rather, it is the grassroots arts advocates who pressure their elected officials to sign petitions and Dear Colleague letters, who rally people to vote, and who donate to pro-arts politicians. The advocates are what makes arts lobbying work. We urge anyone concerned with the state of arts in America to join our movement. It’s free.
We may not need a march on Washington, but we do need a million arts advocates to join our political movement. We’re 25 percent of the way there, and we urge anyone who has a platform of readers, followers and members to help the arts community build its political clout by encouraging people to become Arts Action Fund members.
* It is important to note that the Americans for the Arts Action Fund is distinct from Americans for the Arts. Some of the blog posts have reported that Americans for the Arts issues the Report Card grades – that is not true. The Congressional Arts Report Card is a project and publication exclusively of the Americans for the Arts Action Fund and its PAC. The Americans for the Arts Action Fund is a 501(c)4 social welfare organization, not a charity. As a result, the Arts Action Fund can legally engage in electoral activities, produce scorecards, conduct unlimited grassroots lobbying campaigns, and administratively support its PAC. However, a 501(c)(3) charity like Americans for the Arts cannot perform any electoral activities and is limited in the amount of lobbying it can legally do.