More than $28.2 million was stripped from anti-poverty programs during this past legislative session by our majority party under the assertion that they were following a "fiscally responsible approach" by forcing our federal dollars to sit idle in a reserve fund.

The politicians advocating the cuts claimed that our Temporary Assistance for Needy Families reserve fund was headed for depletion in 18 months and that Hawai'i officials — like their counterparts in Louisiana — would soon be running out of money for welfare checks. This is outright false!

Leading this policy against the advice of the Lingle administration were Sen. Rosalyn Baker and Rep. Marcus Oshiro, who chair the Legislature's budget committees. In an April 25 report, they pointed to Louisiana as an "instructive counter-example." Supposedly, Louisiana policymakers were forced to make "wrenching" cuts in their TANF initiatives.

Now that Baker, Oshiro and their majority party colleagues have made their own regressive TANF cuts — senselessly depriving Hawai'i's most vulnerable citizens of $28.2 million in federal funds — we don't hear much talk about Louisiana any more.

Maybe that's because Louisiana, the Democrats' poster child for so-called reckless TANF spending, isn't so reckless after all.

If you want to learn the true story about Louisiana's TANF strategy, do not listen to Baker and Oshiro. A far better source is Daniel Tuman, who directs the Administrative Support Division of the Louisiana Department of Social Services. A letter from Mr. Tuman is posted on the Hawai'i Department of Human Services Web site at www.hawaii.gov/dhs.

It turns out that Louisiana has always had sufficient federal funds for welfare checks, meaning that remaining TANF dollars can be wisely invested in anti-poverty initiatives. It also turns out that welfare caseloads have declined significantly in Louisiana — even in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Similarly, Hawai'i's welfare caseloads have declined each year since 1999.

The bottom line is that Louisiana did not carelessly spend its TANF money, and never ran out of federal funds to make welfare payments. That's because the state carefully reduced its spending on anti-poverty programs, when and as needed, which is exactly what the Lingle administration advocates doing.

So instead of pointing to Louisiana as a counter-example of how not to manage TANF money, the Hawai'i majority party should have followed Louisiana's lead and the advice of the Lingle administration, rather than base their decisions on misinformation.

For the past five years, our DHS, under the leadership of Director Lillian Koller, has done an award-winning job of managing TANF resources. These same resources were not even discovered by previous administrations and only utilized by Director Koller. Her initiatives have won the praise of high-ranking federal officials and the gratitude of social service agencies and their clients statewide.

Hawai'i's TANF money is being used for successful programs that: