Shocker: Sarah Palin Slashed Funding For Pregnant Teens By Expanding It
In the wake of the announcement that Bristol Palin, Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, is pregnant many in the media and on the left have been making a big deal about Sarah Palin apparently having slashed funding for teenage mothers in Alaska.
Here’s an example from the Washington Post.
ST. PAUL — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.
The problem, of course, is that Palin didn’t really slash funding for teen mothers at all. Instead she agreed to grow it by $3.9 million. And what’s worse is that the Washington Post knows this. They even printed it right in the article that accuses Palin of slashing the funding.
After the legislature passed a spending bill in April, Palin went through the measure reducing and eliminating funds for programs she opposed. Inking her initials on the legislation — “SP” — Palin reduced funding for Covenant House Alaska by more than 20 percent, cutting funds from $5 million to $3.9 million.
It takes a special kind of dishonesty to think that growing spending on a program by $3.9 million instead of $5 million is “slashing” its funding.
Update: For what it’s worth, the $3.9 million Palin did approve for Covenant House represents an approximate tripling of state funding for that organization over 2007.
And by the way, Covenant House is a faith-based organization. I thought liberals hated that?
