and a leading congressional Medici. “I don’t think it’s fair,” he says, that civilian arts should suffer while military music prospers.
Such cries draw a sympathetic audience among legislators worried about Pentagon “waste.” One is Republican Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon, whose Appropriations Committee scrutinizes defense spending. He recently lambasted the military brass for budgeting bands, historians, museum curators and 1,605 “recreation specialists and sports technicians,” all of whom “contribute little or nothing to our military strength.”