Yesterday afternoon, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies approved a bill that would provide $145 million each for the NEH and the NEA in FY 2018. While this is a $4.8 million reduction from the FY 2017 levels, we read this number as the subcommittee’s strong rejection of the president’s proposal to defund the Endowments.

The Trump Administration’s budget request is nearly uniform in its attack on funding streams that support humanities research, teaching, and programming. The call to eliminate funding for the Department of Education’s International Education Programs (known as Title VI and Fulbright-Hays) is in some ways the most menacing because Congress has tended to be less supportive of these programs in recent years than many of our other priorities.

In the past day, several humanities advocates have expressed concern about language in the Congressional Budget Justification that the National Endowment for the Humanities released on May 23. This document requests $42.307 million for FY 2018 and justifies the request as the amount needed for the “orderly closure of the agency.” It also notes that “no new grants or matching offers will be made beginning in FY 2018.”

This morning the Trump Administration released its Presidential Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2018. This document expands on a budget blueprint released by the Administration in March that called for the elimination of funding for most of our budget priorities. As anticipated, this detailed request reiterates the earlier calls for the elimination of the NEH, IMLS, NHPRC, and Title VI and Fulbright Hays.

Earlier today, Congress approved an omnibus appropriations package to fund the government for the remaining five months of FY 2017. This bill includes several significant victories for the humanities community.

This morning, President Trump released a budget blueprint that calls for the elimination of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Institute for Museums and Library Services, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. It also calls for the reduction or elimination of the Department of Education's International Education programs. 

Click here to send a message to your Members of Congress and the President to let them know that you value the National Endowment for the Humanities.

News broke this morning that the in-coming Trump Administration has a budget blueprint that proposes the elimination of NEH, along with other cultural agencies, and a major downsizing of others.

We started to hear that good news was on its way last week, and this morning it arrived: the House Appropriations Committee approved a bill providing $65.103 million for Title VI and $7.061 million for Fulbright-Hays, international education programs. These funding levels, the same as last year, are a significant victory after the President requested and the Senate Appropriations Committee passed a 69% cut to Fulbright-Hays.

On Thursday, June 9 the Senate Appropriations Committee sent to the Senate floor a Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Bill that would cut Fulbright-Hays by 69% to $2.168 million while maintaining level funding for Title VI at $65.103 million. The proposed cut to Fulbright-Hays would devastate the program—if enacted, there will be no new competitions for Fulbright-Hays grants in the coming year.