This blog was written by Gabi Porter, a graduate student at George Washington University in Washington DC.
For the past few weeks now, it’s been hard to ignore the rumblings over the looming debt ceiling grow to an alarming crescendo.
Simply put, the debt ceiling is a cap set by Congress on the amount of money the federal government can borrow. By raising the debt ceiling, Congress is essentially upping the government’s credit limit. Unfortunately, Republicans (who have a majority representation in the House of Representatives), have tied their vote to raise the debt ceiling to even further budget cuts than those they passed this spring.
The Treasury Department estimates that the United States will be unable to fulfill its financial obligations by August 2, our country will be forced to default on our loans—meaning that we would be unable to pay members of the military, write checks for Social Security and Medicare, or make the necessary payments to banks and individual creditors both domestically and internationally. There has been some debate over how this would impact the economy at large, but everyone can agree that it would not be good.
Raising the debt ceiling is too important to the national and international economies to be tied to further partisan bickering, especially when the cuts suggested could do serious harm to the fragile recovery and hurt our chances of bringing in future revenues.
Unfortunately, arts and culture is one of the first places that the federal government looks to slash costs. This spring, the House passed a $40 million cut to the arts endowment, and continue to push deeper cuts across the board—some even going so far as calling to completely eliminate federal arts funding.
The National Arts Endowment is a lifeline for artists and arts organizations across the country that have already seen their state funding slashed in recent years. By completely defunding the program, arts and culture across the country would suffer.
Not only are the arts a key part of cultivating a vibrant community, but they are a huge industry. The nonprofit arts sector contributes $166 billion dollars annually, employs 5.7 million people, and pays $30 billion in tax revenue. Seems a bit counterintuitive for the government to cut funding to a sector that pays them $30 billion a year, doesn’t it?
Now more than ever the arts community needs you to be an advocate.
Reach out to Arizona Citizens for the Arts to get involved, or write your Senators and Congressional representatives (you can find your congressional district and the address and telephone number of your representatives here). Tell them your story, how the arts make your life richer; improve the local economy, and are a vital part of our national identity.
Don’t forget that your representatives answer to you, so make your voice heard. Please contact your representatives today.
