IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, CUT SOMETHING
Dec. 14th, 2010 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogITEM: House Republicans have a grand plan on how to cut govt spending: by asking The American People™ what they want chopped out of the budget.
It’s pretty simple: just go to Eric Cantor’s YouCut site and vote on that week’s list of targeted items, then Cantor (or someone) puts it up for a vote in the House – stuff like, say, selling excess federal property ($15 billion savings!), prohibiting the hiring of new IRS Agents to enforce Obamacare (another $15 billion saved!) and taxpayer-subsidized union activities ($1.2 billion savings!).
As far as I know, none of these measures has ever passed, if only because the GOP is the minority party.
Until January, of course. Once the GOP officially takes over the joint, it’s possible YouCut might actually lead to real action.
Which has scientists worried, because Cantor has a new idea for YouCut: dig out individual agency projects and ask The Taxpayers to decide if they’re worth funding.
And the first agency up for plundering: The National Science Foundation.
That could spell trouble because it basically invites people who don’t know anything about science to pass judgement on what’s scientifically worthy of federal funding.
Research on fruit flies comes to mind.
The good news (if you can call it that) is that YouCut probably won’t result in a whole lot of funding cuts at the request of people whose expertise in that area is having an Internet account.
For a start, the Senate has to approve these things too. More to the point, I don’t think it matters to Cantor and the House Repubs whether they ever actually pass any of these measures. The YouCut program looks like a cheap publicity stunt to convince voters that they really do have a say in how their tax dollars are spent because after all, shucks, in a representative democracy, yr the boss. (Which is also why the DHS has put you in charge of spotting terrorists in Walmart.)
Also, the scorecard seems designed mainly to show which way House Reps voted on a given measure so that the GOP can tally them up later and use them in 2012 campaign ads – “See here, Rep. SoAndSo actually voted in favor of wasteful spending of money to subsidize sleeper cars in Amtrak trains” (or whatever).
Don’t get me wrong: it’s actually not a bad tool for showing people the kinds of things the federal govt spends money on that maybe we don’t need. But I’d like to see one that puts the Republican pet pork projects on the docket as well, not just things the GOP doesn’t happen to support. And if we’re going to make it project-based, input ought to be limited to people who actually know something about that field.
Otherwise, you might get people talking nonsense about states seceding from Medicaid and Social Security programs. Ha ha ha ha –
Oh. Right.
Low budget,
This is dF
It’s pretty simple: just go to Eric Cantor’s YouCut site and vote on that week’s list of targeted items, then Cantor (or someone) puts it up for a vote in the House – stuff like, say, selling excess federal property ($15 billion savings!), prohibiting the hiring of new IRS Agents to enforce Obamacare (another $15 billion saved!) and taxpayer-subsidized union activities ($1.2 billion savings!).
As far as I know, none of these measures has ever passed, if only because the GOP is the minority party.
Until January, of course. Once the GOP officially takes over the joint, it’s possible YouCut might actually lead to real action.
Which has scientists worried, because Cantor has a new idea for YouCut: dig out individual agency projects and ask The Taxpayers to decide if they’re worth funding.
And the first agency up for plundering: The National Science Foundation.
"If you find a grant that you believe is a waste of your taxdollars [sic], be sure to record the award number," participants are told. "[W]e will publish a report outlining the grants identified by the YouCut community."
The suggested search terms – "success, culture, media, games, social norm, lawyers, museum, leisure, stimulus" – and the contrast drawn between "worthy research in the hard sciences" and "questionable projects" hint that researchers funded by the NSF's Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences have the most to fear.
The suggested search terms – "success, culture, media, games, social norm, lawyers, museum, leisure, stimulus" – and the contrast drawn between "worthy research in the hard sciences" and "questionable projects" hint that researchers funded by the NSF's Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences have the most to fear.
That could spell trouble because it basically invites people who don’t know anything about science to pass judgement on what’s scientifically worthy of federal funding.
Research on fruit flies comes to mind.
The good news (if you can call it that) is that YouCut probably won’t result in a whole lot of funding cuts at the request of people whose expertise in that area is having an Internet account.
For a start, the Senate has to approve these things too. More to the point, I don’t think it matters to Cantor and the House Repubs whether they ever actually pass any of these measures. The YouCut program looks like a cheap publicity stunt to convince voters that they really do have a say in how their tax dollars are spent because after all, shucks, in a representative democracy, yr the boss. (Which is also why the DHS has put you in charge of spotting terrorists in Walmart.)
Also, the scorecard seems designed mainly to show which way House Reps voted on a given measure so that the GOP can tally them up later and use them in 2012 campaign ads – “See here, Rep. SoAndSo actually voted in favor of wasteful spending of money to subsidize sleeper cars in Amtrak trains” (or whatever).
Don’t get me wrong: it’s actually not a bad tool for showing people the kinds of things the federal govt spends money on that maybe we don’t need. But I’d like to see one that puts the Republican pet pork projects on the docket as well, not just things the GOP doesn’t happen to support. And if we’re going to make it project-based, input ought to be limited to people who actually know something about that field.
Otherwise, you might get people talking nonsense about states seceding from Medicaid and Social Security programs. Ha ha ha ha –
Oh. Right.
Low budget,
This is dF
