One possible result of tax-cut plan.

Buried deep in Missouri House Bill 20, one of 22 appropriations bills that outline how state money will be spent next year, is a $1.6 million appropriation for the care of foster kids in the custody of the Children’s Division of the Department of Social Services.

Among the things the money would pay for are diapers for 2-year-olds. Currently the state cuts off the diaper allowance when children reach the age of 2, the unstated policy of the state of Missouri apparently being that children should be potty-trained by then.

HB 20 would give those toddlers and their foster parents, who already have enough stresses in their lives, another year to get it right. It also would raise the clothing allowance for older kids from about 40 percent of what the federal government recommends to about 65 percent.

HB 20 would pay for this with federal money: $329,000 in child care funds and $1.3 million from the Federal Budget Stabilization Fund, the federal “stimulus fund” you’ve heard so much about.

But now, thanks to the Missouri House Republican caucus, there’s some question about whether HB 20 will pass, at least in its current form. The Republicans last week decided they would rather give $1 billion of the stimulus funds back to taxpayers — half a billion in each of the next two years.

This would be accomplished by reducing the 6 percent state income tax to 5.5 percent for two years. If you pay your taxes through withholding, as most people do, you’d get a few bucks extra each week.

With your GOP stimulus, you can buy two a week with change left over!

For example, if you’re married with three kids and make $45,000 a year, you’d see about $2.71 extra in your paycheck each week. You could have something from the value menu at McDonald’s. Meanwhile, 2-year-old foster kids would be wet.

Certainly there’s room for legitimate debate about using stimulus funds to buy diapers. There’s no room for debate about the state’s responsibility to care for neglected and abandoned children. It traditionally has done so in a mean and penurious manner.

But telling 2-year-olds they have to hold it? Is this the sort of society we want to live in?

At least when the stimulus funds were dropped in their laps, Speaker Ron Richard, R-Joplin, and Appropriations Chairman Allen Icet, R-Wildwood, responded to a need. But the GOP caucus wasn’t happy with some of the ways Mr. Icet’s committee proposed spending stimulus money.

Indeed, the diapers are but a small fraction of the cuts. Big-ticket items in the committee bills also would be eliminated — $20 million in funding to restore some of the cuts in Metro transit service in St. Louis, construction projects at state colleges and universities and a host of others. All would have put people back to work and kept to the intent of the federal stimulus bill.

Make no mistake: What the House GOP has done is political grandstanding at its worst, embarrassing and shameful. The state Senate must exercise its traditional role as the grown-up chamber of the Legislature, making sure the state’s money and the stimulus money are spent fairly and effectively.

Those 2-year-olds are not the only people in Missouri who need to be changed.