WASHINGTON — To New York officials, the $3 million in federal economic stimulus money they received to transform an old canal boat into a 259-foot-long floating museum was money well spent.
"Its very presence on the canal brings new life to the waterfront," said Craig Williams, a historian at the New York State Museum.
But to some in Washington, it's a symbol of pork-barrel excess that taxpayers can ill afford in a time of record budget deficits.
"Should we build a museum when we have roads in disrepair?" Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) asked.
In the last four years, Coburn said, $28 million has gone to fund 55 transportation museums. And millions more have gone to other kinds of museums.
Such spending is drawing new scrutiny after money went to institutions such as the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky, the Hunting and Fishing Museum of Pennsylvania, and the Los Angeles County Fire Museum in Bellflower.
"We have to ask ourselves: Is this of national significance?" said Leslie Paige of the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste.
House leaders have told lawmakers that museums won't be a high priority in the new transportation funding bill. The last such measure included money for the National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio, and the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.
Some spending bills moving through Congress contain money for museums -- including $930,000 for the Aerospace Museum of California near Sacramento, $350,000 for the Museum of Aviation in Georgia and $100,000 for the Cape Cod Maritime Museum. The Senate defense bill includes $25 million to expand the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. But congressional leaders denied a lawmaker's request for money for a New York museum dedicated to "the history and evolution of the North American maple syrup industry."
Supporters of museum funding said it was even more important in a tough economy.
"The fact that some in Congress still don't understand all the ways museums enrich our communities -- as educators, as stewards of history and culture, and as economic engines -- is cause for concern," Ford W. Bell, president of the American Assn. of Museums, said in an e-mail response to a recent Senate effort to cut museum funding.
"Our job is to educate," said Patricia Mooradian, president of the nonprofit Henry Ford Museum, which received about $1.2 million in the last transportation bill. "It's so important for people to learn about the past, to learn about culture and heritage and what made this country great."
