Arts, Humanities Cuts Clear House : Culture: GOP-backed legislation abolishes funds in two to three years after slashing budgets. But Senate committee may act today to keep the programs alive.

WASHINGTON —  In a major step toward the Republican goal of dismantling federal support for cultural institutions, the House approved legislation Tuesday to slash spending for the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities by about 40%.

The bill, which is designed to begin carrying out a plan to abolish the arts endowment in two years and the humanities endowment in three, was approved on a 244-181 vote.

“In two years the NEA would no longer exist,” said Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), an architect of an agreement between GOP leaders and younger conservatives to support separate legislation to abolish the arts endowment one year earlier than the three-year phaseout planned earlier. “In two years, it’s over.”

Before approving the bill, the House easily rejected amendments to abolish the endowments even more quickly. The amendments were proposed by conservatives skeptical that Congress would follow through on the two-year phaseout.

As approved by the House, the bill provides $99.5 million for each endowment in the coming fiscal year, down from current budgets of $162 million for the arts endowment and $172 million for the humanities.

Democrats decried the budgetary onslaught, saying that the endowments have made valuable contributions to the arts and scholarship.

“It is vital to American culture,” said Rep. Pat Williams (D-Mont.). “It is vital to American enlightenment.”

Supporters of the agency now are turning their attention to the Senate, where moderate GOP supporters of the endowments have more influence and a key committee is expected today to consider legislation that would keep the endowments alive.

“Most people agree [that] the endowments will suffer budget cuts along with other government programs. The question is how much,” said Richard Woodruff, director of congressional liaison for the NEA. “I don’t believe what happened in the House makes the demise of the endowment as a federal entity inevitable. It makes it more difficult, certainly, but not inevitable.”

The House vote on the endowments came as House Republicans moved on other fronts to make deep cuts in a broad array of social programs. The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved legislation to cut the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s budget by nearly one-quarter, abolish President Clinton’s national service program and cut out one-third of the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. However, the committee backed away from a proposal, recommended last week by an Appropriations subcommittee, to close three NASA spaceflight and research centers.

The House approved the endowment cuts as part of a much broader appropriation bill that also finances the Interior Department and a hodgepodge of independent agencies.

Among other things, the far-reaching bill extends a longstanding moratorium on offshore oil drilling, abolishes the federal agency that compiles the list of federally designated endangered species and rescinds a key provision of the California Desert Protection Act by eliminating National Park Service funds to run the new Mojave National Preserve.

But no issue provoked as dramatic a confrontation as the endowments, which had been slated for abolition after three years under a bill approved in May by the House Committee on Economic Opportunity.

Republican freshmen who wanted a quicker abolition of the arts endowment last week staged a rare revolt against the GOP leadership. When GOP leaders tried to bring the Interior appropriation bill to the floor, endowment critics helped block the move by voting against a procedural resolution needed to begin debate.

To appease the GOP renegades, House Republican leaders agreed to support a two-year phaseout of the arts endowment.

Endowment critics included social conservatives who see the agencies as, at their worst, purveyors of obscenity masquerading as art and of left-wing values under the guise of scholarship.

They also included fiscal conservatives who said the endowments are a frill that the government cannot afford at a time when budget-balancing plans are forcing cuts in welfare, health and transportation.

“This was a lot more driven by budget considerations than it was by social considerations,” said Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.), a leader of the freshman revolt.

Before approving the endowment spending bill, the House rejected amendments from conservative Republicans seeking even deeper cuts in spending for the endowments.

The House rejected, 227 to 179, an amendment by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) to cut arts spending another $10 million. Saying that the agency was not exercising responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars, Stearns singled out for criticism the agency’s support for Highways Inc., a Santa Monica performance center that he said has produced explicit homosexual performances “too lurid to talk about.”

Jordan Peimer, Highways’ associate artistic director, said: “[Stearns] doesn’t know what we do. He doesn’t know who the artists are who work here. Their lives are as valid as those of conservative Christians. They don’t understand that at heart a statement like that represents the opposing [of the] principle of the Founding Fathers, of e pluribus unum.

“We’re supposed to honor diversity, but he and people like Donald Wildmon [of the American Family Assn.] want to impose one view of America on all. There are no live sex acts onstage at Highways. It’s ludicrous to say so. They’re [Congress] out to crucify homosexuals and people of color.”

Many fellow Republicans also opposed Stearns’ amendment in light of the leadership’s agreement to seek the agency’s abolition in two years. “I don’t know why we are whipping this horse again,” said Rep. Amo Houghton (R-N.Y.).

The humanities endowment, which has been less central to the conservative critique than the arts agency, easily survived a challenge when the House rejected, 277 to 148, an amendment to eliminate all money for the humanities endowment.

In the Senate, key members of the Labor and Human Resources Committee oppose abolishing the agencies. During committee debate today, Chairman Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.) and Sen. James M. Jeffords (R-Vt.) are expected to back a plan to keep the endowments alive but cut their funding by 5% a year over five years--a far more modest cut than the House is seeking.

To address concerns about Highways Inc. and other controversial performances financed by the NEA in the past, the Senate bill is expected to cut off grants to individual performers, channeling all funds through institutions instead.

Conceding that the Senate probably will vote to keep the endowments alive, Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) is proposing a middle ground between that path and the House desire to abolish the endowments in two years. Abraham has proposed phasing the endowments out over five years and shifting their functions to the private sector.

Times staff writer Lawrence Christon contributed to this story.