Superficial analysis aside, the law certainly could use reform, but elimination would harm, not help, the taxpayer. The proposed transportation program cuts, however, brings Green Scissors 2001 back to form by selectively proposing cuts for some programs, mysteriously ignoring the elimination of other similar programs, and missing the big picture by refusing to consider elimination of federal transportation spending in toto . Federal transportation spending is little but a bottomless barrel of pork, overbuilding and subsidizing infrastructure projects in the districts of politically important voters and shortchanging the rest of us to do so. Better to eliminate that spending altogether and let each state worry about how and how much it should spend on public transportation given competing budgetary needs. Such a plan would not only reduce federal spending, it would reduce federal taxes insofar as the federal gasoline tax would no longer be necessary.
Identical problems haunt the report's proposed water program cuts.
Their mission is to subsidize development projects that cannot attract sufficient private capital. And it is an absolute and utter mystery to us why Green Scissors 2001 refused to address the subsidies to the domestic fishing industry. Payments to fishermen authorized in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act are directly responsible for much of the overharvesting of dwindling commercial fish species. In conclusion, while we applaud the effort to find wasteful government spending and find only a few program cuts to quibble with, Green Scissors 2001 managed to let more anti-Green corporate welfare to escape than not. Too bad the contributors to Green Scissors 2001 lacked the intellectual courage of their newly minted limited government convictions.