TEXAS! You’ll never guess what I found. Remember our GIANT deficit? Remember all of those kids without health insurance? Remember all of those schools that are on the brink of closing? Well I just found 8 MILLION DOLLARS that we can put towards some of those things.

Look – here’s over 4 million of it:

Texas Pregnancy Care Network 2010 Financial Statement

The other 4 million dollars are given to places just like this one.

And look! Their “Core Services” are actually just things that we should be able to find elsewhere in the TX budget, anyway! Non-biased Pregnancy Counseling? Hey, we do that for free! Christian-based mentoring? That’s what the church is for, silly! (And that’s free too!) Adoption education? Yep, us too! So do TX adoption agencies! Assistance with food, shelter, clothing, medical care? Awesome – TX already has that available to *all* women in need with their plentiful budget, right? Not just the ones that visit these church fronts? Great.

Good thing we found this money, because 22 out of the 23 non-profit CPCs that you’re giving this 8.3 million dollars to are Christian-based organizations. Phew! That would kind of be like putting 8 Million tax Dollars directly into a religious collection plate of your choosing! Yikes!

I also wanted to point out that 78% of their budget is dedicated to counseling services (which means only 22% goes to things like diapers/food/materials – the things that might realistically help women in financial need.) Hmm, that’s like getting paid… $63 dollars an hour to counsel! Wait, they *are* getting paid $63 dollars an hour to counsel! They don’t even have counseling degrees! We’re paying for that? Man! Aren’t you glad we found this money?

And get this! They say they provide “options” counseling for pregnant women, but they don’t even give women all of their legal options! Weird!

One last thing. Maybe we can use some of this 8 Million dollars to help all of the women and children who are cut off from their services when their child turns 1 year old. (How does that saying go? “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day… and then after a year, that’s his problem.” …Right? Something like that.)

Anyway, I sure am glad we found all this money that you guys must have accidentally OK’d for the new TX budget. That was a close one, Texas. Giving CPCs 8 million dollars a year is a slap in the face to the realities that women and children actually face, during the pregnancy, the first year of child care and beyond. They need more than a guilt-laden counseling session and diapers from the church for a year. Get real, y’all.

More detailed information on CPCs and your tax dollars can be found here, here and here.