It would take a hardhearted person indeed to tell the parents of autistic children that their kids will be trapped in public schools that aren’t sufficiently funded to serve their needs, which is precisely what voucher advocates will be hoping this time around as they rely on an already well organized autism lobby to make yet another attempt to bring vouchers to Texas.

Anti-voucher groups claim that this would open the door to a more broad-based voucher program since students with other disabilities (and their lobbyists) would demand their own “scholarships.” Ultimately, this could put the state into the position or paying for disabled students to attend the kind of Indonesian madrassas that turned Sen. Barack Obama bin Hussein into a terrorist.

Nevertheless, the Statesman reports that Sen. Shapiro is working on a bill to create a voucher program for autistic students. “I’m not here to cover the expense of the tuition of a private school,” Shapiro said without acknowledging that she is also not here to cover the expense of public schools. The article did say, though, that she thought the legislature might need to increase the amount of money it gives public schools to work with autistic children.

Now, there’s an idea.

Of course if we increase funding for public schools to work with autistic students, then we’d have to increase funding for schools to accommodate students with other disabilities. Sliding a little further down this slippery slope to the pits of hell we’d have to increase funding for all students, which could actually help public education, and that just won’t do.

And so, you see, by insufficiently funding a thing, we can justify insufficiently funding it some more.

(Read more about the life of ITPT’s Senior Education correspondent at his personal blog.)