Editorial: Final curtain call

Saturday, Aug. 12, 2006 | 7:30 a.m.

A 38-year-old national theater company devoted to using American Sign Language is faced with going belly-up because of U.S. Education Department funding cuts.

According to stories by The New York Times, the Education Department has stripped the National Theater of the Deaf of an annual $687,000 grant that provided two-thirds of the company's annual budget. The cuts were ordered by Congress in December 2004, and the money stopped coming this year.

The Education Department has cut $2 million in annual grants for cultural programs for the deaf. Other groups feeling the pinch include California's Deaf West Theater Company and cultural programs in half a dozen major U.S. cities.

Connecticut lawmakers approved a $200,000 emergency grant to keep afloat the national theater, located in West Hartford.

But when news reports of that measure surfaced, the National Endowment for the Arts - which received a $5 million funding increase from Congress this year - called for immediate repayment of a $75,000 debt it says the National Theater of the Deaf owes from an NEA agreement struck 15 years ago. One would think the NEA would help this group.

The term flinty barely begins to describe this deal.

Bush administration budget cuts have gutted grants for environmental conservation, for college students and, now, for cultural programs benefiting the deaf.

Such callous cuts erode our quality of life in bits and pieces.