Want a great example of political false economizing? Look no farther than Myrtle Beach single mom Patricia Hawkinson, whose boys the S.C. Department of Social Services recently booted out of a state-subsidized day-care program. As she notes in a letter on today's editorial page, Hawkinson is at risk of going onto the welfare rolls because day-care costs would consume more than two-thirds of the $1,400 per month she earns managing a quick-loan agency.

Someone has to look after her kids, ages 2 and 8, and only she can do it - if she gives up her job. The loss of income would make her eligible for welfare - a taxpayer-financed stay-at-home mom.

She faces this agonizing choice because S.C. legislators gave the DSS insufficient money to serve about 17,300 of the 22,000 children enrolled in the day-care program during the fiscal year that ended June 30. Hawkinson's boys got caught in the squeeze.

Legislators shrank the budget because the Bush administration and Congress sent the state too little money to sustain the federal share of the program. Rather than make up the federal shortfall from state tax money, legislators passed the pain along to the "richest" parents with kids in the program.

When the Republican Congress reformed the federal-state welfare system in 1996, with President Clinton's grudging assent, it rightly suffused the new program with the expectation that welfare clients would take economic responsibility for themselves, with timely assistance from the federal government and the states. The program generally has been a success, erasing the lifetime-on-the-dole ethic that plagued the old welfare system.

But the reform program only works for enrollees with kids if two things happen: Noncustodial parents, mostly fathers, pay their child support on time and in full; and single parents, mostly mothers, get day-care assistance so they can accept full-time jobs. Such parents almost always need help with day care because their jobs don't pay well enough to cover day-care costs with enough left over to live on. And way too many dads don't pay their child support.

As Hawkinson's plight shows, when government skimps on its day-care promise, welfare-to-work breaks down. If grandparents, friends and relatives can't take up the slack, parents who lose day-care support have to quit working and stay home with little kids.

True, single parents share some responsibility for their own plight. They could have been more choosy in picking boyfriends or husbands, could have avoided having children, could have done hundreds of things to make their lives come out better.

But if human compassion alone doesn't justify giving them the tools necessary to get their lives on track, common sense does. Kids left to their own devices inevitably get into trouble, good bets to become the welfare clients - or criminals - of tomorrow. It's far cheaper for taxpayers to help them than to allow them to slide back into welfare - and pay to keep them there.

Welfare reform at heart is a Republican program. That the Republicans in charge in Washington and Columbia fail to keep their signature social program in proper working order is a betrayal of Hawkinson and other single parents who took the welfare-to-work promise seriously.