Expenditures on CPS: Out of control and always getting worse. AND...for what?

I have mentioned previously in this blog, spending on "Child Protective" "Services" (CPS) (and all the other names by which it is known) in my home state of Maine is thoroughly out of control, to the point where the largest employer in Maine is no longer the massive "Bath Iron Works" complex that builds destroyers and frigates for the U.S. Navy, but rather our "Department of Health & Human Services" (DHHS.) But, Maine is by no means an outlier, in fact when you delve into the national figures on a state-by-state basis, the amount of money we spend in Maine to have our families harassed and our children placed in truly grave danger is about average.

Here is an important study to have a glance at:

https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/public-welfare-expenditures

The study substitutes the term "public welfare" for CPS, and there are a few other minor welfare programs tucked into those numbers, but for our purposes, we will use those figures when discussing the runaway freight train that is CPS spending, nationally. State and local governments across the USA spent 610 BILLION dollars on CPS (and related "services") in 2015, the latest year for which figures have been compiled. That's about half of the total spent for CPS, as typically, federal expenditures come in at about 40-50% of the overall totals. If we conservatively estimated that the real total then is ONE TRILLION DOLLARS per year, and that the U.S. population is around 300 million people, that means that the USA spends about $3,300 on CPS and related programs for every man, woman and child in America, EVERY YEAR.

The only category of overall spending in the USA that even rivals overall CPS expenditures in 2015 was defense spending which was a distant second with just under $600 billion, or roughly 60% of what is spent on "public welfare" by all sources. When we delve into the state-by-state numbers though, we get some pretty uneven results to assess.

This study takes out some of the other welfare spending from the "public welfare" figure, and only covers up through 2014, but we can still gain some pertinent insights from it:

https://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Federal-and-State-Local-Child-Welfare-Agency-Spending-per-child_ChildTrends_June2018.pdf

We can see, by totaling the numbers for "federal" and "state and local," that the most expensive "State" is the District of Columbia (i.e. power pedophile central) where the number comes in at $1,939 per child in 2014...which is actually down significantly over the past few years. The lowest spending state is Idaho, which spent only $135 per child in 2014. That means the most expensive overspends the least expensive "State" by a factor of app. 15:1.

With regard to the states that seem to get the most notice for serious failures and abuse by CPS staff, caseworkers, and their allies in the media, the psychiatric/Big Pharma milieu and the law enforcement/court systems, here are the numbers in question for the "repeat offenders"...Michigan, California, Arizona. Michigan spent $502 per child in 2014, California spent $449 per child in 2014, and Arizona spent $379 per child in 2014. Connecticut, which has not had a single mention, yet, in these pages spent $971 per child in 2014, placing it second on the list, and my home state of Maine came in at $454.

Overall, states spend 21% of their entire budgets on "public welfare," just a tick behind K-12 education which comes in at 22%. To compare how things have changed from the 70s, when I was in high school, and when almost no one I knew had ever even heard of "CPS," we take this excerpt from that first link provided:

"In 1977, state and local governments spent $135 billion on public welfare (in 2015 inflation-adjusted dollars). In 2015, they spent $610 billion, almost four times that amount. Much of this spending increase has been driven by the rising cost of health care, including Medicaid. Between 1977 and 2015, other state spending grew more slowly than public welfare spending. In 1977, 13 percent of state and local spending went to public welfare compared with 21 percent in 2015."

So, in just little more than one generation, CPS has grown from a nuisance to a MAJOR BEHEMOTH four times the size of what it was, with powers no one in their right minds ever suspected or intended for them to have. As we know, one of the most intractable things about centralized big-brother government is getting spending cut once precedents have been set. And, of course, if we ever do get any real cuts, every time something bad happens to a child, the leftists will scream bloody murder about how the cuts were responsible, even as they remain silent (or cry for more money) NOW, as plenty of children are hurt, molested or murdered, RIGHT NOW, while in CPS custody.

With all of the evidence that CPS doesn't work, and that children who are taken from families by CPS are manifestly made more at risk as a result, there is NO EXCUSE for such massive expenditures of the people' s hard-earned tax monies. Will there ever be the willpower to do anything about this madness, or will CPS just continue to take more and more of our resources from us, along with our children?

It really is up to you. Do what's right.

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