If President Donald Trump is serious about creating jobs in the nation’s heartland then he needs to rethink his own proposal to eliminate federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the agency that helps fund the not-for-profit groups behind thousands of the theater and music productions seen every year in middle America.
That’s the analysis of leaders of the labor unions Actors’ Equity and American Federation of Musicians, two organizations that could see employment among their members crippled if the cuts in Trump’s so-called “skinny budget (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-entertainment-news-updates-march-trump-budget-nea-cuts-real-hed-1489674364-htmlstory.html)” are enacted into law. The current NEA annual budget of $148 million is small but important, they say.


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