CultureBot as always keeping us apprised of the mood swings of our insightful, and/or feckless government representatives. 

U.S. Senate to Art World: Drop Dead!

And a quick link to try and do something about it.

http://capwiz.com/artsusa/issues/alert/?alertid=12612041

I'm sure you know that NY Arts is a large part of the economy, no just directly, it also drives other moneys into the economy by attracting visitors to other entertainment services such as dining and hospitality.

This makes the entertainment sector one of the most effective trickle down investments.

And though it's usually a sad point the fact that arts salary are comparatively low means that these workers are at high risk during an economic downturn, and that moneys invested to maintain there jobs will also have one of the highest re-investment rates into the local economy.

This pure economic need of those employed in the arts; in addition to the cultural, educational, and general standard of living arguments makes support for the arts through an economic slowdown very important.  

As peoples disposable income tightens we need to maintain valuable community and cultural institutions in working order, because they are much much harder to rebuild than more commercial and obvious profit generating endeavors.  And yet they improve our quality of life far more than many people understand.  Just in pure capitalistic terms the mission of Museums, and Community arts is to pool and maximize resource availability to the community maximizing cultural capitol.   And this cultural capitol generates real monetary value.  Cutting the funding in tight times like this can have disproportionately devastating effects on the availability of this cultural capitol.  A museum may manage to maintain it's collection, but available of that collection may be diminished considerably because there is not enough funding or staffing to mount exhibitions and even offer open hours to the public, in a time when the tightening budges of that public are going to mean more need for public entertainment, education venues and shared space instead of video games and Mc-Mansions and other high cost per use private space.