ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline
Volume 8, Number 70
July 19, 1999

In this issue:

[1] Action Needed: FY2000 Funding for the Arts and Humanities
[2] Labor-HHS-Education Funding Update

[1] Action Needed: FY2000 Funding for the Arts and Humanities

On July 14 the House of Representatives debated H.R. 2466, FY2000 
Interior Department Appropriations bill.  Rep. Louise Slaughter 
(D-NY) and Rep. Steve Horn (R-CA) offered an amendment to increase 
funds for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the 
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) by $10 million.  The 
amendment failed on a narrow and mostly partisan vote by 217 to 
207.  

Immediately after the Slaughter/Horn proposal was rejected, Rep. 
Cliff Stearns (R-FL) offered an amendment to decrease funding for 
FY 2000 for NEA and NEH by $2 million.  The Stearns amendment was 
soundly defeated 124 to 300.

The President asked Congress for $150 million for both the NEA and 
NEH, while the House and Senate bills fall well below that 
request.  The House passed the Interior bill late Wednesday, July 
14, which holds the National Endowment for the Arts at $98 million 
and the National Endowment for Humanities at $110.7 million.  The 
Senate FY2000 Interior bill provides a very modest increase of $1 
million each above current funding for the NEA and NEH.       

Action Needed:
Within the next couple of weeks the Senate will vote on S. 1292, 
the Senate FY 2000 Interior bill.  Interested readers should 
contact their Senators and ask them to increase funding for NEA 
and the NEH.  Give examples of how you have used a grant from one 
of these agencies (see the May 6 ALAWON (v8, n41) at 
http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon/alwn8041.html).  If you need 
further information regarding Congressional appropriations for 
library programs, please contact Mary Costabile at 1-800-941-8478 
or mrc@alawash.org

[2] Labor-HHS-Education Funding Update

As a follow-up to the July 12 ALAWON (v8, n68), the House and 
Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittees both 
tentatively plan to markup education funding bills on Wednesday, 
July 21. 

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ALA Washington Office, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 403, 
Washington, D.C. 20004-1701; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 
toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; e-mail: alawash@alawash.org; Web 
site: http://www.ala.org/washoff.  Editor: Lynne E. Bradley; 
Managing Editor: Deirdre Herman; Contributors:  Mary Costabile, 
Carol Henderson, Peter Kaplan, Carrie Russell, Claudette Tennant 
and Rick Weingarten.