Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is in favor of President Donald Trump taking a "chainsaw" to the wasteful spending in the federal budget, but pleads for one line-item to get spared — National Endowment for the Arts.
In a column for The Washington Post, the former Arkansas governor says if people are surprised by that coming from a noted conservative, they shouldn't be.
"The largest increase in arts funding ever came under President Richard Nixon, and when budget hawks thought about cutting the minuscule funding of the NEA in the 1980s, it was no less than President Ronald Reagan who stepped in to make sure those in our poorest neighborhoods continued to have access to this road to academic success and meaningful way to express their creative gifts," Huckabee wrote.
Huckabee makes the distinction that the NEA does not send 1 cent to Hollywood, but rather to kids in poverty.
"I do care greatly about the real recipients of endowment funds: the kids in poverty for whom NEA programs may be their only chance to learn to play an instrument, test-drive their God-given creativity and develop a passion for those things that civilize and humanize us all," Huckabee wrote.
"They're the reason we should stop and recognize that this line item accounting for just 0.004 percent of the federal budget is not what's breaking the bank."
And Huckabee makes it clear that he wants the government to stop wasting money and funding some congressman's "pet project," for example, but the NEA does not fall into that category.
"To some, it may seem as though the $147.9 million allocated to the NEA in fiscal 2016 is money to be saved. But to someone such as me — for whom an early interest in music and the arts became a lifeline to an education and academic success — this money is not expendable, extracurricular or extraneous. It is essential," Huckabee wrote.