Drug testing for welfare seems like a good idea, right? At first thought, it may seem that way, but I wanted to pose a couple of points that may not have crossed your mind…
First of all, federal funding for welfare is specifically designated for welfare programs. Unless welfare funding is cut, any “savings” from drug testing will not go back into your pockets as a tax payer, and that savings cannot be redirected toward another use. Also, have you thought about how much the drug tests themselves will cost tax payers in the states passing this legislation?
Secondly, I really don’t see how it can be very effective. Take Tennessee’s food stamps program, for instance. In Tennessee, a person who is eligible for food stamps only has to reapply every six months. Therefore, if Tennessee were to enact similar drug testing legislation, recipients would only have to get clean at application/reapplication time, and then they would have six more months to do all the drugs they want. Let me also point out that, contrary to popular belief, the average welfare recipient only receives welfare for 4.5 months.
Lastly (and I’m talking to you JudgyMcJudgePants), you obviously view most welfare recipients as lazy, mooching, drug addicts. Even if that is absolutely true (and it’s not), those lazy, mooching, drug addicts likely have children who didn’t ask to be brought into this world. Those children are the ones who will really suffer, and they don’t deserve to go hungry so lawmakers can feel better about “cracking down” (no pun intended) on welfare. That’s my opinion, at least. Already one in five children in the United States is hungry. ONE in FIVE. That’s just something for you to think about when you lay down tonight in your warm, cozy bed with a full belly.
Amy Justice said,
January 7, 2012 at 1:53 pm
Nine times out of ten those kids never benefit from the food stamps. The addicts sell the food stamps for cash. Illinois switched to the debit-style LINK cards to put a stop to it, however recipients found a way around it. You find a person willing to give you, say, $100 cash for $250 worth of food “stamps”. That person then FOLLOWS you to the nearest grocery store (most of the time you could find 4 or 5 of these people at the first of any given month outside the Danville Walmart) and the payee picks out the food and the cardholder goes up, pays w/ the card, cash is exchanged and the two part ways. In Illinois, an average family with only 2 kids receives $750 a month in food stamps. Imagine how much you’d get with 4 or 5 kids? I fully support drug testing. A TRUE addict isn’t going to be capable of doing without long enough to have a clean test, but what they SHOULD do–hair-follicle testing. That method is virtually foolproof. The amount of welfare NOT given to those who fail will pay for it.
amy j said,
January 7, 2012 at 2:12 pm
One other comment I’d like to make: Even if it DOESN’T go back into my pocket as a taxpayer–I’m just happy it’s not being stuffed into somebody’s crack pipe. You’re right–not all recipients are deadbeats. I was thankful for the foodstamps when my husband lost his job, but the sad truth is, there are so many that ARE deadbeats that it actually hurts those who aren’t. It shouldn’t be that a 70 year-old woman has to live on $600 a month and is DENIED food stamps because she doesn’t have kids, while an able-bodied single mom with 6 kids by 4 different men is eating T-bone steak… And YES they are. I’ve stood in line at the store at the first of SEVERAL months watching scores of people paying for cuts of meat I could only DREAM about buying, only to whip out their cards and gleefully turn to tell their baby-daddy they still have a couple hundred LEFT on their cards. Honestly–I ate WAY better when I was poor.