Hey, Wall Streeters got welfare ... Should they be drug tested too?
Demonizing welfare recipients
By Editorial Board, WashPost, Published: December 16
REPUBLICAN STATE lawmakers, whose appetite for deporting illegal immigrants may be waning along with their standing among Latino voters, are shifting their gazes to welfare recipients. In statehouses across the country, including Virginia’s, they are preparing measures that would require people applying for or receiving welfare benefits to undergo drug testing.
In political terms, pushing welfare mothers into the legislative crosshairs may be more beneficial — or at least less suicidal — than gunning for hardworking Hispanics. As public policy, it’s a loser.
The superficial appeal of screening welfare recipients for drug abuse is reflected in the formulation favored by Florida’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, who says, “Our taxpayers don’t want to subsidize somebody’s drug addiction.” In polls, large majorities of the public like the idea.
But why single out welfare recipients, besides the fact that relatively few of them are likely to vote and fewer still to vote Republican? What about those receiving other forms of government assistance, including food stamps, unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation — should they be stigmatized by drug testing, too?
Advocates of drug testing argue that those enrolled in the main welfare program, known as Temporary Aid to Needy Families, are more likely to use illegal drugs than is the population at large. That plays nicely into antiquated pop culture images of drug-addicted welfare queens.
(More here.)
REPUBLICAN STATE lawmakers, whose appetite for deporting illegal immigrants may be waning along with their standing among Latino voters, are shifting their gazes to welfare recipients. In statehouses across the country, including Virginia’s, they are preparing measures that would require people applying for or receiving welfare benefits to undergo drug testing.
In political terms, pushing welfare mothers into the legislative crosshairs may be more beneficial — or at least less suicidal — than gunning for hardworking Hispanics. As public policy, it’s a loser.
The superficial appeal of screening welfare recipients for drug abuse is reflected in the formulation favored by Florida’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, who says, “Our taxpayers don’t want to subsidize somebody’s drug addiction.” In polls, large majorities of the public like the idea.
But why single out welfare recipients, besides the fact that relatively few of them are likely to vote and fewer still to vote Republican? What about those receiving other forms of government assistance, including food stamps, unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation — should they be stigmatized by drug testing, too?
Advocates of drug testing argue that those enrolled in the main welfare program, known as Temporary Aid to Needy Families, are more likely to use illegal drugs than is the population at large. That plays nicely into antiquated pop culture images of drug-addicted welfare queens.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
WashPost has a point, we should not single out welfare recipients, lets drug test anyone who is ‘on the dole.’
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