Since when did needing temporary help to feed your children make you less worthy of protection under the law. Well Missouri lawmakers have recently passed legislation requiring people that receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, to take random drug tests to stay on the “roll.” Republican lawmakers across the country are lobbying to enact similar laws. I believe the Constitution says a little something about Americans being protected against unlawful search and seizure. http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_953196cf-8104-5758-8198-60e151debe90.html
Republicans continually insist they are the party of smaller government, but here again we have another crystal clear example of Republicans helping to create a cottage industry of privately-operated drug labs for welfare families. The details of how the law will work is further proof that this is just a way to help republican business “friends” make money.
The cost of testing can be upwards of $75, done randomly throughout the year, as many times as the system pulls that particular recipients’ name from a database. This means a company can charge the government $75 for a yet undetermined number of times in a year. The American Civil Liberties Union estimates that for every found to be using, it will cost the state $20,000 or more. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125387528
The first year the program is projected to cost Missouri taxpayers more than $1 million, and more every year thereafter. Since laws rarely if ever expire, you do the math over fifty years. When will voters see this party’s slight of hand and stop voting them into office.
This law assumes the worst of people needing help in one of the darkest economic seasons of my life. It criminalizes people receiving a meager subsidy from a government that easily wastes money subsidizing the oil industry to the tune of $4 BIILLION. The US government has given Wal-Mart over $1 billion in welfare to transform them into the “entrepreneurial success” they claim to be. Give me a billion dollars and I will show the government how much a female, minority, single mother can succeed! http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/24/news/fortune500/walmart_subsidies/
For those who say the law is about helping addicted people on welfare, I say liar liar pants on fire. If a welfare recipient is found to be using drugs, they are referred to a rehab facility that they will have to pay for. Then they will lose the benefits if a third party cannot be found to accept funds on their behalf. The notion that someone on public assistance can pay for rehab is insane. And will the “third party” be tested? Moreover, addiction is a disease that should be recognized as such, and since America seems to have lost the war on drugs I say treatment at the state’s expense is in order.
Lawmakers say this law will further help welfare recipients become ready for work. If true, then why fixate on drug testing, and not literacy. What better way to get people from welfare to work than to ensure they can read and write. A 1996 study in the American Journal of Public Health looked at the assumption that people on public assistance are drug addicted. In short, the study found people on welfare drink and use drugs at around the same rates as the national average. http://www.ndsn.org/DEC96/WELFARE.html
Politicians from the great state of Arizona had the audacity to say such a law will help them save $1.7 million a year after kicking families off welfare.
Laws such as this one are just a smoke screen for the building of another layer of bureaucracy created to mire our government in true mismanagement, and produce more businesses. Don’t misconstrue its false attempt to help people in our community that need the most help in these trying times. Children are the largest beneficiaries of programs such as Women Infants and Children and food stamps. To kick their parents off of welfare will leave our children to suffer. Because of this law, one more child will go to bed hungry tonight because Republicans have been mean-spirited enough to attack their families instead of lifting them up.
To be truly fair, all corporate executives that represent companies that get welfare from the government should be required to get drug tested randomly. Welfare is “free money” no matter who is getting it. Test one, test them all.
