Here we go again. After epic failures in Florida, Arizona, and Tennessee, Scott Walker brings the “drug testing for welfare applicants” issue home to Wisconsin as he considers a bid for the White House in 2016.
Should Walker see his plan implemented, Wisconsin would become the 12th state to demonize welfare applicants by assuming that they are?all addicts out to abuse the system. Rick Scott was the first to make this proposal in the state of Florida back in 2011. After a federal judge ruled that the policy was unconstitutional, Scott spent nearly $400,000 in litigation costs to appeal that ruling. So much for saving taxpayers money.
SCOTUS rejected a plea to hear Rick Scott’s appeal in April of 2014.
Even without litigation costs, the policy has been a failure in terms of money saved to taxpayers in Florida. How much of a failure? In the first two months of the policy, only nine people actually failed. Rick Scott’s stock in companies that make drug tests, which was transferred to his wife before the policy was implemented in order to reduce the “conflict of interest” it represented, made it a win/win situation for him, although not so much a win/win for taxpayers. The “Huffington Post” notes that:
“Scott argued that drug testing welfare applicants would save the state money. But in the few months the state screened all those seeking aid under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, the rate of positive results was so low the cost of the tests likely outweighed the savings of denied benefits.”
Florida is not the only state in which this policy has failed to save anyone anything. In Arizona, in the years between 2011 and 2014, over 108,000 people seeking assistance were tested. Two of them failed.
In addition to its failure to achieve its purpose of saving taxpayers money, the ACLU opposes the policy due to its violation of the 4th Amendment regarding illegal search and seizure. Being poor and needing help, the ACLU says, is not voluntary and should not be vilified in this manner. Kimberley Davis of Operation Breakthrough, a day care program for low-income mothers, agrees.
?All this does is perpetuate the stereotype that low-income people are lazy, shiftless drug addicts and if all they did was pick themselves up from the bootstraps then the country?wouldn’t?be in the mess it’s in.?
One success of attempts to implement this policy, on the other hand,?was the hard proof it provided that the stereotype is false. Only 2 percent of Florida’s welfare applicants tested positive, while 8.7 percent of the general population has. This should prove that the poor and needy are not more prone to substance abuse issues.
Apparently, Walker didn’t get that memo.
