The Green Scissors Campaign

Organised by Taxpayers for Common Sense and supported by Friends of the Earth, The Green Scissors Campaign is a coalition of environmental, taxpayer, budget watchdog and other groups that have come together to cut environmentally harmful and wasteful government spending.

Green Scissors offers a menu for budget-cutters of all parties. Their 2001 report outlines 74 programmes that, if cut, would not only save US taxpayers more than $55 billion but also protect the environment. Although one senses some anti-business sentiment in some of their views, their plans are a welcome change from the usual calls for increased government spending to cure environmental ills.

Programmes suitable for cutting range from those for dredging sand from the bottom of the sea and pumping it onto eroding beaches to preserve overdeveloped waterfronts, through sugar subsidies which are destroying large parts of the Everglades. Tobacco subsidies not only harm the environment but also smokers’ health. The biggest of all, the $10 to 30 billion, which go to various energy interests, mostly worsen global warming.

There are signs of progress. Recently, the Bush Administration proposed the elimination of several programs targeted by the Green Scissors Campaign, including the Market Access Program, aspects of the Export-Import Bank and over $1 billion in agriculture subsidies. These are first steps in what could be real reform of the federal budget.

iGreens are the Green Scissors on this side of the Atlantic.

Interest groups will always complain when they lose their subsidies, but most  cuts could be paired with careful deregulation to ease the blow, and save the taxpayer even more money. That way the pain is directed where it should be, at government and bureaucracies themselves. The rest of us will be both richer and greener.

Footnote added 21Jan 2002

Green scissors is certainly on the right track but it may not be quite as environmentally friendly as first appears.  It seems to target only the wasteful government funding that goes to the political right.  Humph!  Read more here 

Jim Thornton