TAKING IT OFF YOUR INCOME TAX
RUTH DRAPER, the most accomplished monologist of this and possibly any other century. used to do a long, hilarious, and oddly touching set-piece called The Italian Lesson (still available, thank Providence, on Spoken Arts SA 779) which sketched the predicament of a society matron who finds herself, "midway along the pathway" ("Nei mezzo del cammin'") of her life, hopelessly overcommitted to a schedule of obligations, familial and social, that would gag a computer. About to dash out of the house on her way, successively, to a funeral, lunch at the Plaza, a hospital committee meeting, a philosophy class, and a bridge lesson, she pauses breathlessly in mid-flight to instruct her secretary to send checks to the charity appeals she has already sorted out on her desk: "$10 under the silver frog, $5 under the jade egg." I am reminded of this Mad Scene every year at this time (I am writing this in mid-December) when I come to sorting out and writing checks to the appeals that have been accumulating on my desk over the year. I do not use Mrs. Clancy's frog-and-egg system, but tend to address myself to each appeal individually. That turns out to be rather more time-consuming than I would like, so you can imagine how intrigued I was to learn the other day about what would appear to be a means of taking at least part of this chore off my hands.
There is before the Congress just now a piece of legislation called the Richmond Arts and Education Bill (H.R. 1042) which proposes to place a check-off box, for voluntary contributions to the arts, on the front of our Federal income tax forms. There is one other such box there now, as you may know, for those who wish to fatten the Federally administered fund for needy politicians. I don't know just how popular that box has been, but sanguine extrapolation from information in a recent Harris poll on "Americans and the Arts" indicates that an "arts box" might raise as much as $1.8 billion a year.
Perhaps recognizing the juicy attractive ness of that figure to his fellow Congressmen, Rep. Richmond (D-N.Y.) has built a few fences around it in his bill: the money would be earmarked for either the Arts or the Humanities Endowment (or both), its use would be restricted to creative (not administrative) purposes, and its availability would not affect Congress' already established annual appropriations for the National Endowments.
I have long been a very vocal supporter of at least some government involvement in the arts, but in this case I would like to play Devil's Advocate: I don't believe the fence can be built that will shield $1.8 billion worth of catnip from the wiles of the Washington bureaucracy. First, though the funds would be earmarked for the National Endowment, Sen. Ribicoff (D-Conn.) has already moved to put that office under the control of HEW or the Dept. of Education--which is to say to re move it from the control of the electorate.
Second, $1.8 billion a year means more than a desk, a telephone, and a checkbook. Some kind of accountability is necessary in that fiscal stratosphere, meaning a permanent (civil-service) staff, feasibility studies before (and effectiveness studies after) grants are made, reports, publications, junkets, and even maybe (yum, yum!) an Edifice. Third, can anyone really imagine that Congress would give more money to an outfit that al ready has $1.8 billion yearly to play with? And so, though it's a chore, I prefer to go on writing my own checks, placing my little tax-exempt grants where they will do my personal concerns the most good. There is, for instance, that appeal I just received from my old college glee club. If they are doing half what we were in my day (from Billings to Stravinsky, with Mozart, Brahms, and Bruckner in between), they richly deserve my help. One thing is certain: they won't be get ting any from the National Endowment.
Also see:
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Source: Stereo Review (USA magazine)