Empire building on the backs of the poor

How stupid does the Bush administration think we are? From Slate's Today's Papers, by Eric Umansky:

Doing some crackerjack reporting, the NYT's Elisabeth Bumiller covers Bush giving a speech lauding his proposed cuts. Referring to the Even Start program, which serves kids with illiterate parents and is penciled in for elimination, the president said, "After three separate evaluations it has become abundantly clear that the program is not succeeding." Bumiller quotes an Event Start lobbying group official crying foul, and leaves it at that. But how hard would it have been to track down those three purported evaluations or to get an independent assessment of the program? TP, using such obscure tools as Google, found a study, commissioned by the government, concluding, "On the whole, Even Start projects are meeting their legislative mandate. They recruit and serve needy families. And, a high percentage of families take part in core services and receive an amount of service that compares favorably with other existing programs."