The recent budget deal and mid-term elections show why Republicans continue to take a beating. Despite their purported ideology of limited government, Republicans kowtow to special interests favoring crass exploitation of public resources. They are silent when profitable private acts have negative public consequences, for example former Senator Lauch Faircloth's hog farms in North Carolina. They allow radical anti-greens like Don Young of Alaska and Helen Chenoweth of Idaho to demigod environmental issues unchallenged by responsible adults. In sum, they deserve it.

On issues ranging from education and tax relief to campaign finance reform, the GOP's agenda lacks substance. The environment illustrates how Republicans consistently abandon their core values. By promoting environmentally destructive subsidies, GOPers miss opportunities to harmonize economy and ecology.

An unusual coalition of environmentalists, fiscal conservatives, and classical liberals have joined forces in an attempt to cut expensive and environmentally destructive federal programs. It's called the "Green Scissors" project. Green Scissors targets grossly uneconomical and ecologically inappropriate subsidies. Cotton growers in California, sugar in Florida, and federal flood insurance that encourages building (and rebuilding) in flood plains are examples.

If the Republicans honored their principle of limited government they would lead this effort. Instead, trading long-term benefits for transitory payoffs, they fight it.

Examples of these pathologies are well illustrated by the U.S. Forest Service. The Forest Service manages 192 million acres of forest and grasslands. That's the size of Texas plus Louisiana, minus Connecticut, with a road network eight times the size of the Interstate Highway System.

During the recent budget negotiations Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) included $12.5 million to cut trees in the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska. The Tongass is the biggest money loser of all our national forest timber programs. From 1992 to 1994 alone, taxpayers lost $102 million logging the Tongass. And this discounts to zero the value of amenities and habitat despoiled by roads and clearcuts.

Congressional Republicans make sure Asia has no monopoly on "crony capitalism". To prop-up local mills Stevens required the Forest Service to offer twice as much timber as the market would demand absent subsidies. Exports of Alaskan lumber to Japan and South Korea fell 39 percent in the first three months of 1998. "The marketplace for Alaskan woods...is pretty bad," said Jack Phelps of the Alaskan Forest Association. That was in March and its gotten even worse.

Have Republicans forgotten that markets trump politics at commodity production? The market process separates the incompetent and the systematically unlucky from control over resources. Since there is no analogous mechanisms in government, we must rely upon Congress to cull the sorry agencies and programs. But Republicans reject this task. They see government as an engine of plunder with themselves as engineers. Taxpayers and environmental quality suffer. Hence, the party pays dearly when Senator Stevens and his Republican colleagues mandate flows of commodities though they were Soviet-era commissars on the take.

Here's an example of how the GOP's failure to honor their principles costs taxpayers money. The Knutson-Vandenberg Act of 1930 is an especially heinous example of perverse incentives at work. Intended to provide funds for reforestation, over the years K-V funds have created a huge incentive to cut more trees even at the expense of environmental values. The Act requires a return to the Treasury of only 50 cents per thousand board feet-$2.50 for an 18 wheeler loaded with logs. The purchaser may have paid $1500 for those trees. The agency can keep the difference. The Forest Service uses K-V funds to cover salaries and overhead, not just reforestation. A law suit brought on October 27 by the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (FSEE) challenges this practice. Even agency personnel support this snip of Green Scissors, but the GOP is silent.

Regrettably, no prominent Republican has explained how an environmentalism based on property rights and market signals, coupled with sensible regulations, is more environmentally sensitive and effective than subsidized resource exploitation and development.

Subsidized exploitation of natural resource violates claimed GOP values of markets and small government. Until Republicans impose constructive reforms that support their claimed ideals they will continue to alienate their natural constituency-the well-off and the well-educated. The recent election demonstrates the consequences. Where are Republicans brave and creative enough to propose constructive reforms that respect these ideals?