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Republicans are right: The White House is greatly exaggerating when it says that "women, in particular," benefit from a prevention fund that the House GOP proposes to repeal. The truth is that the fund in question wasn't set up specifically for women's health programs, and we could find no concrete evidence that it has paid anything to gender-specific health programs so far.

For example, the fund has paid for programs to discourage [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], encourage physical fitness, and prevent heart disease and cancer for both sexes. And House Speaker John Boehner is correct when he says the White House itself has proposed cutting this very same fund. The president's fiscal 2013 budget proposes to slash $4 billion from the fund over 10 years. Furthermore, in February, Democrats agreed to a $5 billion cut in the fund to help pay for extending a payroll tax cut and delaying a reduction in Medicare payment to physicians. That bill passed with bipartisan support.

It's true that the fund could specifically pay for women's health programs in the future. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 2013 budget request proposes using money from the fund for its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program, which started providing such screenings to low-income women more than 20 years ago. The fund is also slated to be tapped in 2012 for a community-based program to encourage breastfeeding, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the fund.

The flap is yet another front in a political battle over which party is waging a "war on women." Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his campaign have charged President Obama with doing just that but they've used misleading statistics to do so, as we've pointed out. This time, it's the White House accusing House Republicans of sacrificing women's health in order to pay for a continued reduction in student loan rates.