Come and play the Spot the Spin game!!

Seems that the feministas and their supporters know only one thing: cry
long, cry loud and you'll eventually blind people to the truth with your
screams for attention (and money).
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http://www.wacotrib.com/opin/content...editorial.html

Editorial: Abandoning child support
Friday, September 08, 2006

Now the "no-new-taxes" crowd in Austin knows how the other half lives. The
other half is the local governments on which the Legislature continually
dumps unfunded mandates.
Now the shoe is on the other foot. The issue is child support enforcement
amid dramatic cuts in federal aid.

The question: Will lawmakers step up and deal with a serious problem, or
will they make matters worse?

State officials were in for a shock recently when word came down that the
federal Deficit Reduction Act, passed in February, would result in a cut of
$196.6 million in federal funds for child support enforcement in Texas.

At the same time, Gov. Rick Perry has asked agencies to suggest 10 percent
cuts in spending. That would amount to $43.7 million for the attorney
general's office, which collects child support.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott says the the two sets of budget cuts
would slash his work force by more than half over the next two years. Worse
than that, Abbott says the loss of enforcement capacity could cause a
staggering $2 billion drop in child support collections.

That would win the Olympic gold medal for false economy. Child support is
the linchpin of welfare reform. Instead of relying on the government to pay
for a child, the government goes after the father. Welfare reform is touted
by policymakers in Washington as a major achievement. So why undermine it?
Because they've painted themselves into a corner relative to unnecessary tax
cuts and spending that actually pays off.

This should be a cautionary tale to any and all politicians who talk about
spending cuts "across the board." Some spending cuts end up costing
taxpayers in the end.

Indeed, for a state that spends less per capita than any state in the
nation, deeper budget cuts than already have transpired in the last five
years would be highly destructive in areas like foster care, child and adult
protective services and mental health care.

At the same time, the state continues to heap requirements onto local
governments. McLennan County Judge Jim Lewis says that 70 percent of the
county budget is mandated by the state, though Austin doesn't help out with
any of the costs.

At the federal level, we've seen ambitious programs like No Child Left
Behind become underfunded mandates dumped in states' laps.

We've seen the proposed move to convert Medicaid to block grants. Block
grants are touted as giving states flexibility.

Ultimately, they would limit how much the federal government spends on a
program it created and wants to dump on the states.

And now? Deep cuts in the programs needed to make welfare reform pay off.

And who gets hurt? Not the state. Not the feds. It's the children who get
hurt.