Why it's ridiculous to slash funding from the National Endowment for the Arts

Let’s think about what the figure 0.00003 percent means. Imagine taking a test with 1,000 questions on it and getting three questions correct. That’s pretty awful, right? It’s bad enough you only got three questions right, but at least you got something. Now imagine you got three questions right, but then you wanted to retake it. You were hoping to get maybe four or five right this time. Nothing too crazy, but a small improvement would be nice. Instead, you get the test back to see you didn’t get any questions right. Out of 1,000, not even one. Think about this, but instead imagine you didn’t take a test at all. Imagine you are a government agency relying on funding, and you only receive 0.00003 percent of the budget. Then imagine your portion is out of your control, but you hoped maybe you could at least keep your tiny, tiny slice of the pie. Instead, you discover you’ve been eliminated completely.

This could happen to the National Endowment for the Arts. Last year, according to The Washington Post, 0.00003 percent of the federal budget was allocated to this agency, and now the Trump administration is proposing cutting funding completely for the next fiscal year.

The National Endowment for the Arts describes its role as giving Americans the opportunity to participate in the arts, exercise their imaginations and develop their creative capacities. This, dear readers, is what the people need. I am not arguing that we don’t need the services provided by the agencies that would potentially receive the reallocated funds. We need a military, we need education, we need health care. I would never try to diminish the importance of these.

I will argue that the arts are also important and deserve attention. It saddens me to admit that money is sometimes the best way to give attention, but in this case, it just might be. In the grand scheme of a multi-trillion-dollar budget, 0.00003 percent is negligible. But for an agency, 100 percent of their funding is not negligible. It is not a major loss for this country to fund the arts. It is an immense loss for this country to cut all funding for the arts.

Now more than ever, we need to maintain our ties to humanity. We live in a country divided, and arguing until the end of time is not going to bring us back together. I am all for debate and analysis of ideas, but fighting is not the route to unity. The route to unity is lined with that which makes us human: art, music, invention, creativity and expression. These are the things that bring us together. The attempt to eliminate any part of this from our culture should serve as a red flag. Getting rid of any aspect of art may contribute to us forgetting about human connection. Without connection, why should we care about anyone but ourselves?

Dear readers, this is an outrage. Without the arts, we lose. Sure, we may get some more money in another area, but so what? What difference does any of this make if expressing how we feel is no longer important? Our creative minds are being stifled. Our desire for beauty and deeper understanding of life is being shoved aside. What can we do about it? Create. Create, think and love. Relate, express and understand. There may come a time when all of this becomes hard to do. I beg you, whatever happens, don’t let it stop you.

Taylor Cavaliere is a UF journalism and psychology sophomore. Her column appears on Mondays.

This column has been updated to reflect that the accurate percentage of the federal budget funding received by the National Endowment for the Arts is 0.00003 percent, not 0.003 percent.