Telling teens to just say no to sex doesn't work, so let's waste half a billion dollars doing that

This never actually works In case you were worried that House Republicans haven't come up with any ingenious new ways to waste a whole bunch of your money, worry no more:

Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.) on Monday called for the creation of a new federal grant program that would spend half a billion dollars to educate teenagers about why they should not have sex before marriage.

In a speech on the House floor, Hultgren cited a Centers for Disease Control report from mid-February that said young adults account for 50 percent of all sexually transmitted disease infections.

It's almost too easy, right? If teens are spreading diseases by having sex, we'll just create some government programs'we all know how much Republicans love creating government programs'to tell them to stop doing that. And because teenagers are known as the most obedient and compliant people on the planet, that should fix that problem double-quick. Who can forget how Nancy Reagan singlehandedly eradicated drug use with her super effective "Just Say No" program?

There's just one little problem with abstinence-only education. It doesn't work. In fact, it makes things worse. Head below the fold to find out why.