Need welfare? Get in line for a drug test, you junkie!
A bill that failed before the Missouri Legislature last year is back from the dead. It passed yesterday by a House committee 11-4. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the bill says welfare applicants and those who are already receiving welfare will be screened for illegal drugs if there's "reasonable cause to believe" that they are using. No word on what counts as reasonable cause, exactly, but it's up to the Department of Social Services to decide who gets subjected to a drug test.
"Taxpayers do not have any sympathy at all for using tax money to
subsidize
others' drug use," said Rep. Ellen Brandom, the Sikeston Republican who sponsored the bill.
It gets sticky when you consider how much other money is doled out from the government without the requirement of a drug test. It couldn't have anything to do with who's waiting in line for welfare, could it?
"We provide tax incentives to businesses, but there is no drug test
there,"
said Rep. Jill Schupp, a Democrat from Creve Coeur. "I don't understand where the
fairness
lies."
If caseworkers think their welfare recipients are using drugs, they can require them to take a drug test. If the test comes back positive, welfare will be yanked for a year.
All those drug tests are estimated to cost $2 million -- money that definitely wouldn't be better spent on drug-treatment programs. Definitely not.
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