How Poor Kids Pay for Tax Cuts

In his budget last April, President Bush proudly noted that he was proposing a two-thirds increase in a relatively small but well-regarded program of grants to the states to improve child welfare by strengthening troubled families. The proposal expanded on a campaign promise. The money would help states "keep children with their biological families if... appropriate... return children to their families [or] place children with adoptive families". As in prior years, the grants were to be automatic, not subject to the uncertainties of the annual appropriations process.

The administration now has abandoned that commitment. It pretends still to be supporting the increase, but only if the appropriators can find the necessary funds. By itself, that doesn't bother us. Our instinct is to oppose the proliferation of automatic spending. How many programs, even laudable ones, can sensibly be put at the head of the spending line at the expense of all the rest? But if the administration believes in the program, it must then make room for it within the appropriations process. Instead, to help pay for the president's costly tax cuts, it has mainly been trying hard to reduce the sum the appropriators have available.

The child-welfare turnaround was "announced" in an obscure notation in a mid-session budget review in August. The administration only weeks before had been urging Congress to reauthorize this "valuable safety net program". But the emphasis in the mid-session review was on how little money was left even then for spending increases. "Congress and the president must... continue restraining total spending". it said. "The administration is prepared where necessary to extend the principle of restraint to its own... initiatives." Translation: The vulnerable kids can help pay for the tax cut.

The House has since passed a reauthorization bill permitting but not protecting the extra spending; it's not clear what the Senate will do. A cynic might be forgiven the view that the promise to expand the program, having served a political purpose, now will be allowed to die.