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Friends of the Earth (FOE) is the lead sponsor of the report, along with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG) and Taxpayers for Common Sense, a left-leaning taxpayer group. Several other environmentalist shops and progressive interest groups, including Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Concord Coalition, sign on as well. Despite the claim that "Green Scissors" represents "a diverse coalition of environmental, taxpayer and consumer groups," no right-of-center organization is on the list. The big-time taxpayer organizations — National Taxpayers Union (NTU), Citizens Against Government Waste, the Tax Foundation — are conspicuously absent. The original "Green Scissors" report, published in 1994, was a collaboration between environmental activists and taxpayer advocates, specifically FOE and NTU. This cross-ideological pairing prompted many groups from across the spectrum to sign on. No longer. Environmental insistence on using the report to attack resource use on federal lands led NTU and others to jump ship. Confronted with evidence that their proposed reforms of grazing, timber, and mining programs on federal lands were based on faulty analyses and could not be characterized as spending cuts, the environmental groups dug in their heels. The taxpayer groups walked and the "Green Scissors" report ceased to be a cross-ideological endeavor. Despite the heavy emphasis on traditional environmental activist concerns (mining, grazing, nuclear energy, etc.), many of the items on the "Green Scissors" hit list are worthy of elimination. No die-hard fiscal conservative should support irrigation subsidies, pork barrel water projects, or programs that underwrite corporate research and development. Farmers and ranchers may need to control predators and pests, but there is no reason for federal taxpayers to pick up the $10 million annual tab. If technologies to reduce coal emissions are viable, the coal industry can develop them on their own without an additional $253 million from the federal government — let alone the $2 billion authorized by the House energy bill. "Green Scissors" identifies many of the right targets, yet it often fails to follow through. If the Bonneville Power Administration is fiscally sound, it does not need the Treasury Department to underwrite its debt. The BPA, along with the other power marketing administrations, should be turned over to the private sector. After noting BPA "imposes a significant financial burden on U.S. taxpayers," opposition to further increases to the BPA's borrowing authority is all that "Green Scissors" can muster. The World Bank has squandered millions of taxpayer dollars on ineffective development programs, often at environmental expense. "Green Scissors" doesn't attack the Bank — or U.S. funding of it. Rather, the report zeroes in on funding for a single agency within the bank's sprawling bureaucracy, and a small one at that. Agricultural subsidies feature prominently on the "Green Scissors" hit list — as well they should — and yet the most infamous agricultural boondoggle — ethanol — escapes unscathed. More curious than the ethanol omission is the inclusion of a tax increase as "cut" in federal spending. Federal excise on taxes on petroleum and chemical feedstocks used to finance the Superfund waste site cleanup program expired in 1995. There is still money left in the fund, but "Green Scissors" calls for reimposing the tax, an estimated $1.4 billion per year. Superfund is among the most wasteful federal programs of all time. Al Gore may claim credit for the law's enactment, but President Clinton recognized Superfund is a "disaster." State programs have cleaned up waste sites more rapidly, with less litigation and at a lower cost. If the "Green Scissors" crowd wants to cut federal spending in ways that will benefit environmental protection, they would propose transferring most Superfund activities to the states. Even setting aside the merits of the federal program, a tax increase is not a spending cut, pure and simple. Another mind boggling item on the list is the use of individual fishing quotas, or "IFQs," to apportion catch rights in fisheries. The use of IFQs need not cost taxpayers a cent, and "Green Scissors" does not claim barring their use will generate any budget savings at all. Some environmental groups oppose IFQs because they represent the creation of quasi-property rights in a natural resource, but there is no evidence that IFQs cause any environmental harm. The environmental case against IFQs in "Green Scissors" is purely speculative. The imposition of such quota schemes has improved the economic and environmental performance of fisheries nearly everywhere they have been tried, from Iceland and New Zealand to Canada and a few areas in the U.S. Allocating quota rights among fishermen reduces the destructive "race to catch" prevalent in many fisheries, improves fishing efficiency, and reduces bycatch of non-target species. These are changes environmentalists should applaud (as some do). Only ideological opposition to commercial fishing and anything resembling private property in natural resources can explain the "Green Scissors" stance. The authors of the "Green Scissors" report may falter in their execution, but the principle of targeting fiscally wasteful and environmentally harmful spending is one conservatives should endorse. When Republicans took control of Congress in 1995 their limited government rhetoric did not produce significant cuts in corporate welfare and other ecologically destructive programs. This failure undermined conservative credibility on environmental issues. Cuts in funding for the Environmental Protection Agency in the name of shrinking the federal budget was never matched by cuts in programs benefiting energy companies, utilities, or agricultural interests. Big government is not environmentally friendly. There is no better way to illustrate this fact then to highlight the ecological failures of federal programs and cut them down to size. It verges on the criminal that taxpayers are taxed once to fund environmental destruction and then regulated (and taxed again) to clean up the mess. Building genuine cross-ideological coalitions to cut anti-environmental spending is one way to slow the growth of Uncle Sam's bureaucracy. It is also the first step in demonstrating that there is nothing inherently anti-environmental about the limited government agenda. — Jonathan H. Adler is an assistant professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. |
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