Leaders of the taxpayer-environmentalist Green Scissors Campaign will call this week for a halt to 22 wasteful and environmentally destructive highway projects in 15 states. According to the coalition, putting the brakes on these unneeded projects would save $10 billion in federal tax dollars, protect the environment and help preserve local communities.

The 22 projects are detailed in Road to Ruin, a new report by Taxpayers for Common Sense, Friends of the Earth and U.S. Public Research Interest Group –leaders of the Green Scissors Campaign. The report’s coordinated national and grassroots release on Sept. 12 will kick off a national campaign that includes taxpayer, environmental and grassroots groups united to kill unnecessary road projects like those detailed in Road to Ruin.

Included in the report is the Red Rock Crossing bridge in Arizona. In order to shave minutes off of the drive to a local golf course, this bridge would spoil a popular landscape used in dozens of feature films. Former Sen. Barry Goldwater has said, “There is no earthly reason … to put a bridge at Red Rock Crossing” and the Arizona Republic has called the rocks “a symbol of the American West.”

Another featured project is U.S. Route 220/322 in Centre County, PA, the district of powerful Pennsylvania Congressman Bud Shuster. The new road, with its price tag of $288 million, is designed to ease traffic jams after Penn State football games on a few Saturdays in the fall

The report highlights wasteful highway projects in 15 states across the country: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, as well as Washington, DC, Panama and the nationwide practice of building timber roads in national forests.

Copies of the report are available free to members of the media or for $10 to others.

Welfare cowboys face showdown

The Senate will vote this week on S. 1459, which would continue millions of dollars in subsidies for grazing on public lands. The bill is opposed by budget busters and environmentalists.