Appearing on Fox and Friends yesterday morning, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who will sit on the powerful appropriations committee next year, advocated the creation of a new congressional panel to look for things to cut in the federal budget. When host Brian Kilmeade asked Flake for examples of what he would like to cut, Flake listed only two items: ethanol subsidies and Head Start, the venerable early education program which he said is “not money well spent”:

KILMEADE: But give me an example of what you’d liked to cut, where you saw waste already.

FLAKE: Well, our farm programs, for example. … Another program is Head Start, for example. We spend a considerable amount of money when study after study shows it’s not money well spent. And we’re going to have to cut programs like this, if we’re going to trim this budget.

Watch it:

Flake’s two proposed cuts, representing just $15 billion, would do almost nothing to reduce the deficit. But more importantly, they reveal a disturbing set of priorities, in which help for impoverished children gets the ax before legitimately wasteful programs, or budget-busting tax increases for the wealthy.

Head Start is a valuable early education program, which has helped millions of low-income children and their families through comprehensive education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services since it was started in 1965. Despite Flake’s claims that “study after study” show the program is a waste, “[s]ubstantial research finds that [Head Start] programs provide educational benefits,” help “improve the health of the children and families they serve,” and “benefits its children and society-at-large by reducing crime.” And contradictory to Flake’s claim, a longterm study in California found that “our society receives nearly $9 in benefits for every $1 invested in Head Start children.”

Certainly, Head Start has room for improvement. But the solution is to fix its problems and improve the program, not to scrap it all together. The Obama administration has been working to do just this, and has increased funding to Head Start though the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Center for American Progress has proposed several ways to improve Head Start, beginning with moving the program to the Department of Education from Health and Human Services, where it is currently housed.

But even with its problems, there are dozens of better places Flake could look to cut $7 billion dollars — a relatively meager sum that represents just 0.002 percent of the federal budget — than on the backs of needy children.

After Senate Republicans last week refused to support an omnibus spending bill designed to meet their specific parameters, Senate Democrats are scrambling to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government through March 4. As I noted yesterday, there are some worrying aspects about the CR, including that it doesn’t provide funding to implement the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

However, Democrats did see fit to use the CR to address an important and pressing problem: covering the $5.7 billion shortfall in the Pell Grant program (which provides college tuition funding to low- and moderate-income students). Due to unexpected demand in the wake of the Great Recession, the program needed a funding fix to prevent grant cuts in 2011. Some House Republicans, however, are displeased that the extra funding was included:

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) decried the inclusion of $5.7 billion for the Pell Grant program, which will incur a shortage without additional funding, calling it “a perennial priority of the House Democrat leadership and Appropriations Committee Chairman [David] Obey [D-Wis.]“…The “Democrat majority will cap off the year with yet another massive spending bill that will force our nation into further deficits and debt,” Lewis said in a statement.

Incoming House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) emphasized that he intends to cut all federal discretionary spending back to the 2008 level, which would entail significant Pell Grant reductions. Simply allowing the shortfall to persist would reduce grants for 9 million students, with the maximum grant cut by $845.

While the House GOP derides Pell Grants as a “perennial priority of House Democrats,” the program is integral to both ensuring access to higher education for disadvantaged populations and boosting the country’s economic competitiveness. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, Pell recipients largely come from traditionally underserved communities, and are “more likely to be female and first-generation college students, and less likely to be white than those who don’t receive the grants.”

Meanwhile, rising tuition is posing an ever-growing problem for higher education students. According to the Pew Research Center, students in 2008 borrowed 50 percent more to finance their education that students in 1996; the average loan amount for a bachelor’s degree recipient is currently about $23,000.

America is now 12th worldwide in percentage of 25-to-34-year-olds with a college degree, trailing, among others, Russia, New Zealand, South Korea, Ireland, and Israel. By 2025, according to estimates by the Lumina Foundation, our nation will be short 16 million college-educated workers, a shortfall which Pell Grants can help to address. But House Republicans seem more eager to cut tuition assistance than work to ensure that America has an economically competitive workforce in the future.