The pros and cons of Congress’ proposal to trim $500 million from Race to the Top to fund edujobs have sparked quite the discussion on this blog.

Most of the commenters seem to think edujobs is a far better use of taxpayer money than Race to the Top.

But here’s one interesting argument in favor of cutting Race to the Top, and not for obvious reasons. Mike Petrilli over at Flypaper says that to leave Race to the Top Round 2 at a bloated $3.4 billion forces Education Secretary Arne Duncan to fund some very mediocre proposals. And that’s not very reform-y at all. In fact, Petrilli isn’t a fan of continuing to bail out states and fund teacher jobs, but he argues that Congress should cut even more from Race to the Top, whether or not the money goes to the states for education jobs.

What do you think of this line of reasoning?