Scott Walker Wants To Drug Test Food Stamp Recipients
This has already been shown to be ineffective, costly and, in Florida, unconstitutional. Scott Walker, however, is oblivious to this. Paul Waldman writes:
The drug testing programs for welfare recipients are usually justified by saying they’ll save money by rooting out all the junkies on the dole, but in practice they’ve been almost comically ineffective. In state after state, testing programs have found that welfare recipients use drugs at lower rates than the general population, finding only a tiny number of welfare recipients who test positive.
But this hasn’t discouraged politicians like Walker, any more than the abysmal failure of abstinence-only sex education discourages them from continuing to advocate it. The test is the point, not the result. Walker isn’t trying to solve a practical problem here. He wants to test food stamp recipients as a way of expressing moral condemnation. You can get this benefit, he’s saying, but we want to give you a little humiliation so you know that because you sought the government’s help, we think you’re a rotten person…
Proposing to force people who have fallen on hard times to submit to useless drug tests has an obvious appeal for a certain portion of the Republican base: it shows that you’re tough, and that you have contempt for poor people. But I doubt that Walker is too worried about how moderate general election voters might view something like that. As Ed Kilgore has noted, Walker’s theory of the general election is a decades-old conservative idea that if you motivate Republicans enough with a pure right-wing message, there will be so many hidden conservatives coming out of the woodwork that you won’t need moderates to win.
Copyright 2015 Liberaland
7 responses to Scott Walker Wants To Drug Test Food Stamp Recipients
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Mike July 17th, 2015 at 12:27
Let me correct the headline, Alan…Wanker going to court to fight the fact the general public uses drugs more than welfare recipients…There FIFY
I think we’ve tried this in 4 or 5 states and the data supports what I wrote above…here in Florida I think the public was 4 times more likely to be on drugs…drug use average less than 1% for those on welfare.
whatthe46 July 17th, 2015 at 13:02
tweet the idiot scott, apparently he didn’t get the fk’n message.
Suzanne McFly July 17th, 2015 at 14:43
Makes perfect sense, for them to get $140/month we should “save” some money by giving them a $60 drug test every month. We probably will avoid paying a whole 2% of this group any benefits and probably only lose $1,000’s.
Um Cara July 17th, 2015 at 16:52
Well, the important thing is that we humiliate these folks as much as possible. I mean, you just can’t put a price on kicking a person when they are down.
anothertoothpick July 17th, 2015 at 15:47
Maybe we should drug test anybody that gets government subsidies.
Start with poor people and then move on the corporations. And how about Israel. Let’s drug test all the people in Israel.
Dwendt44 July 18th, 2015 at 16:53
Better to start at the top, that’s where the big money is.
labman57 July 17th, 2015 at 16:41
The prejudicial presumptions and favorite right wing talking points …
— that federal assistance for families struggling to make ends meet will only promote sloth,
— that those who are out of work would prefer to subsist on welfare rather than be gainfully employed,
— that only unemployed people need food stamps,
— that there are a disproportionately greater number of drug addicts seeking food stamps than exist in the regular population,
— and that poor people are inherently inferior to those who earn a more substantial income
… are completely baseless and perpetuate the ignorance-based stereotype of people in need as being lazy parasites on society … no doubt a deliberate tactical decision by the callous propaganda peddlers in the right wing blogosphere.
Congressional Republicans to constituents: “Can’t make ends meet? It sucks to be you!”