A Republican member of the Indiana General Assembly withdrew his bill to create a pilot program for drug testing welfare applicants Friday after one of his Democratic colleagues amended the measure to require drug testing for lawmakers.
"There was an amendment offered today that required drug testing for legislators as well and it passed, which led me to have to then withdraw the bill," said Rep. Jud McMillin (R-Brookville), sponsor of the original welfare drug testing bill.
The Supreme Court ruled drug testing for political candidates unconstitutional in 1997, striking down a Georgia law. McMillin said he withdrew his bill so he could reintroduce it on Monday with a lawmaker drug testing provision that would pass constitutional muster.
Continue reading Welfare Drug Testing Withdrawn After Amended To Include Testing Lawmakers
I would like to see anyone who runs for public office drug tested!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Marcus | January 30, 2012 at 10:57 AM
Well, as long as we're drug testing anyone who lives off the government on the theory that they could use some of the money to buy illegal drugs, we should insist that senior citizens have to pass a drug test to get their Social Security check, once per year with random timing.
We'll see how long this fascist fourth amendment and fourteenth amendment violation lasts when they're telling grandma to pee in a cup to prove she's not toking the reefer.
In all fairness to the other side... ;)
I can see why such a measure has populist support. It's a well established stereotype that TANF recipients are all just a bunch of filthy lay about breeders that abuse the money.
Allow me to poke some holes in this argument.
1. The bill wouldn't have tested them for alcohol or tobacco use. Those are legal. They're every bit as bad for you, if not worse, than marijuana or other illicit substances, and would be a waste of TANF money. But they're legal.
To paraphrase comedian Bill Hicks "Those are the taxes drugs, the good drugs. If they didn't tax liquor you could be out doing doughnuts in a corn field!"
2. It wouldn't stop with TANF. Eventually they'll force everyone on unemployment to take drug tests.
Florida does this.
3. It's not good fiscal policy.
You will never get enough cost savings from kicking people off the programs to make up for the cost of the drug tests. If we do like Florida does and make recipients of unemployment, food stamps, and TANF pay for their own kits, that money obviously goes to whatever manufacturer of kits and testing labs that paid the politicians that want the tests for the contract.
Either way, Florida's system uncovers about two people on drugs for every 100 people they test.
The real purpose of the drug tests is to associate public assistance or unemployment with criminal activity so that other people are not shocked when the police harass these people like they are well known to do.
4. It continues, and does not reign in the disastrous multi-trillian dollar big government War On Drugs that has been going on without results (other than the police state and violent crime it brought on) for over 30 years.
Last of all...
5. As this post points out, the politicians who receive at least the non -ALEC bribe portion of their salary from the taxpayers, aren't willing to subject themselves to the laws they demand for the most vulnerable members of society.
On an unrelated now, that statist big government fraud, Jim Banks, works for ALEC. I think you were pimping him out on this blog some time back.
Posted by: Ryan Farmer | January 30, 2012 at 03:48 PM
Ryan,
Where you high when you wrote this? Just wondering.
Posted by: Curious minds want to know. | January 30, 2012 at 06:14 PM