10 Practical Reasons We Need to Defend the National Endowment for the Arts

President Donald Trump's administration has renewed efforts to defund the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), proposing for the fourth consecutive year a budget that would zero out the agency. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has staffed the current administration, continues to promote its 1997 report 'Ten Good Reasons to Eliminate Funding for the National Endowment for the Arts' as a key reference in debates. This article, originally published in 2020 and republished in response to these developments, systematically rebuts each of the Heritage Foundation's arguments against the NEA, beginning with the claim that private support alone is sufficient.

The defense of the NEA matters because it represents a longstanding ideological battle over the role of federal government in supporting the arts. The NEA was established in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society to correct biases in private arts funding and ensure the arts are recognized as a vital part of national life, not a luxury. With the Trump administration's repeated attempts to eliminate the agency and the Heritage Foundation's enduring influence on conservative policy, this debate has direct implications for federal arts funding, grant distribution, and the broader cultural infrastructure in the United States.