A $5 million grant for the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance, approved by the Senate last month, now faces an uphill battle in the House of Representatives.
The grant, earmarked for “education programs concerning the Holocaust,” is contained in the Senate version of the Mildred and Claude Pepper Scholarship Act.
The House version of the same bill contains just $500,000, all earmarked for scholarships to help the hearing-impaired learn about government.
But in passing its version of the bill, the Senate added $25.2 million for various other projects, including the grant for the Museum of Tolerance.
An aide to Rep. William Goodling (R-Pa.), ranking Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, which has House jurisdiction over the Pepper bill, said, “The feeling on the House side is not good” toward the Senate version of the bill.
While the aide called the museum a “worthwhile project,” he said it is “not likely” that the House will give final approval to the Senate’s additions to the Pepper bill, including the Wiesenthal Center grant.
An aide to Rep. Pat Williams (D-Mo.), a key Democrat on the committee, said his boss “will try to get back as close as possible to the original” House-passed version of the bill.
While the House may agree to keep a few of the additions, such as funding for the Wiesenthal Center, “when you lump them together, there is some concern that some of (the projects) may not be meritorious,” the Williams aide said.
A separate attempt was made this year to gain funding for the museum. In August, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) introduced a bill that would give $7.5 million to the museum, but it was not voted on.
$50 MILLION PROJECT
The key lawmakers supporting the grant were Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the chairman and ranking Republican on the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee.
Rabbi Meyer May, executive director of the Wiesenthal Center, said that he met with Hatch last January and that Kennedy took a 90-minute tour of the museum’s models on Nov. 5. The Senate approved the measure on Nov. 16.
May defended the grant as not unlike the federal government’s transfer of land near the Washington Monument to build the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
He said that “the history of education and educational programs related to the Holocaust justifies the federal government’s involvement in a program on the West Coast.”
May pointed out that the Museum of Tolerance will be the only one in the United States to deal with both the Holocaust and the history of racism and prejudice in America.
Construction of the 165,000-square-foot, eight-level building is at the halfway point and will likely be completed next August, he said. It is scheduled to open in January 1991.
The museum has raised $36 million of its $50 million fund-raising goal, he said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
