See:
LA Times and
San Francisco Chronicle
Commentary:
The arts are certainly not a "waste", nor "non-stimulating" to the economy. Music in particular almost literally "stimulates" the economy by creating a pleasant, "stimulating" atmosphere for working and shopping (aka spending money back into the economy). Live music makes an even greater attraction for special events that stimulate spending, whether it's a night at the opera, a festival, a show at a club, or a ribbon cutting for a new hardware store. Music has been shown to stimulate developing brains, and may help us turn out better engineers as well as musicians. Music is used for therapy for the ill and even the dying. No waste here, Mr. Coburn, nothing elitist, nor ultimately frivolous, about any of it. Some specific proposals may be better than others, but that's true in any area of endeavor, and is the reason that we have screening processes for grants and loans.
Sure there's a lot of serious business to do out there. But the arts help make life worthwhile, and, as in some of the musical examples I've just given, can provide a playful yet effective approach to serious concerns. A non-musical example might be a book or a play that serves to illustrate and help us understand important truths that we might otherwise miss.
It's one thing to leave the arts out of the package due to arguably more pressing concerns. It's quite another to slip a gratuitous insult to the Arts community into the package at the same time. Personally, I think the Arts are a crucial part of our infrastructure, and that artists have too long been undervalued because they are so much more eager than most to work very hard at making their contribution to the community - i.e. it's too easy to get them to work practically for free. If we all stopped working (I'm a musician as well as a blogger), the economy would feel the effects.
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