Don’t we all love the children? They’re so cute. And they say the darndest things, too! So sweet. So innocent.

We just love them to death. So much joy! So much fun! So many Legos underfoot, but that’s another story.

And our future! Let’s not forget about our future. Let’s face it, if there aren’t any kiddos running around, there isn’t much hope for our future, because the rest of us will all be dead. What happens then? Well, if we’re all dead and there aren’t any of those darn children to come along behind us, there won’t be a fresh generation to screw everything up.

You see the problem. We want those children. We need those children, runny noses and all.

That’s why every politician loves to proclaim how much they love the children, how they are our future and the rest of all that oozing rhetorical drivel. Oh sure, the pols are pro-children, pro future, pro, well, we already covered the complete hooey of the pandering class.

We love the children until it comes to spending some money for those sniveling, shiftless brats — especially here in Florida.

When it come to stuff that helps to pay the medical bills for poor children by expanding Medicaid, the state suddenly becomes more reluctant than Donald Trump staring off into the distance when the dinner check arrives.

Pay? Really? Pay for a sick poor kid’s ear infection? No! Let the freeloading 9-year-old get a job and pay for his care himself.

This disdain for providing for children was on full display when the Hillsborough County Commission moved to give Hillsborough County public schools the bum’s rush off a plan to renew the Community Investment Tax, which has been in effect since 1996.

Money from the half-cent sales tax has been used for a multitude of infrastructure needs — roads, fire stations, parks, sidewalks, cultural projects and schools, which captured about 25%, or about $650 million of the money.

Oh, and there was one more thing.

In 1995 voters had rejected a Community Investment Tax measure.

So the late County Commissioner Joe Chillura sweetened the deal. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had just been acquired by mogul Malcolm Glazer, who deemed the existing Tampa Stadium unworthy for his team to play in. Glazer threatened to leave Tampa if he didn’t get a new stadium, arguing the Bucs were a pile-driving economic engine, as if every time Warren Sapp broke wind in New Tampa somehow a Mercedes Benz would be sold in Ruskin. It was all a load of gibberish. But it worked.

Chillura added funding for a new stadium to a revised CIT, which comfortably passed in 1996 and that’s how Helloooooo Sucker! Stadium eventually got built. Glazer also promised to pay for half of the estimated $300 million stadium, which he and now his rug rats still have never ponied up.

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Still, the Bucs got the stadium money and the public got improved roads, parks and sidewalks, and one of the nation’s largest school systems was taken care of, too.

As the tax comes up for renewal, this might have qualified as one of those “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” moments. But this is Florida. This is Hillsborough County, where Duh! grows like Spanish moss.

In theory, most all of us would agree those beloved, yet irritating children sort of insist on stuff like food, clothing and a reasonably competent education. Too greedy?

Apparently so, since commissioners such as Michael Owen have concluded the county’s public school system comprises a bunch a panhandlers. And that is why the proposed renewal of the CIT would cut public school funding from 25% to 5%.

Indeed, Owen sniffed that the 5% allocation was a “compromise,” which is sort of like Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman claiming the burning of Atlanta was merely a “compromise” since he left an outhouse standing.

Education is expensive — if you do it right. It costs money to build and maintain buildings, provide technology and attract good teachers. But for decades, Republicans in Florida have waged war on public education, gutting and diverting funding. And then accusing public schools of failing in a mission to educate they have cynically sabotaged.

That’s not governance. It’s a master class in short-sighted stupidity.

If Owen and his fellow commissioners want to make it more difficult for Hillsborough’s schools to do their jobs, what then will become of the money? What’s that sound? Is that a phone ringing in Commissioner Owen’s office? Is that Malcolm Glazer calling from the grave?