Obama’s FY 2012 Budget: NEA, NEH Reduced; Save America’s Treasure and Preserve America Axed UPDATED

President Obama has announced the Fiscal 2012 budget that he will present to Congress, and, as expected, it includes some cultural cuts among the terminations and reductions. According to the Office of Management and Budget's introduction of the large list of proposed economies throughout the federal government:

There have been more than 120 terminations, reductions, and other areas of savings identified that will save approximately $20 billion each year.

The President's budget would eliminate all funding for the Save America's Treasures and Preserve America programs. These provide matching-grant support from the National Park Service for historic preservation.

According to the President's explanation (on P. 64 of the PDF document linked at the top):

These programs contribute to community and State-level historic preservation and heritage tourism efforts, but in a time of difficult trade-offs funding is being focused on nationwide historic preservation goals, such as increasing grants-in-aid to States and Tribes to carry out Federal responsibilities under the National Historic Preservation Act.

The National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities both would take hits if the President's plan were adopted---each down 13%---from $168 million this fiscal year to $146 million next year.

[UPDATE: I just hope that the President's math on the rest of the budget is better than it was on these figures: The budget terminations and reductions document, on P. 113 and 114, exaggerates the NEA/NEH decrease as 22%---the figure that I originally used in this post until I did the math and found it was 13%.]

According to the President's explanation (P. 113-114):

The National Endowment for the Arts is working with its sister agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities, to better coordinate and/or consolidate their administrative functions in areas of mutual interest. Such efforts will help to reduce overhead costs at both Endowments, which could produce savings that can be reallocated to partially offset some of the grants programs.

By contrast, the President's request for the Smithsonian Institution represents an increase of 13%, from $761 million this year (under a continuing resolution from Fiscal 2010) to $861.5 million next year. Most of this growth comes from the capital budget, which would rise a whopping 80%---from $125 million this year to $225 million next year---mostly due to the construction of a new National Museum of African American History and Culture on the Mall.

The Republicans will doubtless have their own ideas.