States Consider Drug Tests for Welfare Recipients

reply to post by saabster5


4 hours a week for a tax-payer handout?

Why not 40 hours a week, like a normal employee at a job earning a living? Why not 25 hours a week with 15 hours mandatory to look for a paying job?

Welfare is not a right. It is not a lifestyle. It is a means to get people through hard times and temporarily help them out. Meeting a certain set of rules and regulations should be part and parcel of receiving tax-payer assistance.

Originally posted by saabster5
I think this is a terrible idea.
1) Do you realize how much a drug test costs?
2) Crimes will escalate / Gun rights are being restricted...think about that.
3) When we all are required to submit to drug tests to get a tax return, who will cry unconstitutional then?
I worked for the federal government and was required to submit for drug testing because I drove a government vehicle with passengers in it. The other employees that worked there did not because their job description did not say that had to have passengers in the government vehicle. (How is that fair?)
You complain about "your" tax dollars going to welfare recipients...I complain that my tax dollars are going to some rich executive that bombed his company intentionally to get a bailout? Why aren't we requiring these execs to submit??? This is stupid legislation to drive a bigger wedge into society!
I am more in favor of requiring XX amount of community service for the welfare check, but not un-fathomable hours. Maybe 4 hours a week at a local food bank/shelter. Just plain stupidity to allow the government another opportunity to infringe on our personal rights as humans.

1. Did you read the article? $400.
2. Crimes will escalate from taking drugs away from people? Or making them get jobs?
3. Apples to oranges. Drug testing 300 million people who want to claim their own money, which is what income tax returns are, isn't going to happen. On the other hand, drug testing, the what, 10 million (rough guess, probably way off) people who collect welfare, which is something they DO NOT PAY TAXES ON, but still collect, is a little different.

And yea, I do have a problem with the rich execs stealing our tax dollars. But the got rich from stealing our non-tax dollars, because we were stupid enough to buy from them, or they were smart enough to profit from us.

Community service for a welfare check???? Why can't they just get jobs? McDonald's is always looking for people to flip burgers. There are tons of jobs out there, people just have to suck it up and be willing to do the work.

Originally posted by saabster5
I think this is a terrible idea.
1) Do you realize how much a drug test costs?
2) Crimes will escalate / Gun rights are being restricted...think about that.
3) When we all are required to submit to drug tests to get a tax return, who will cry unconstitutional then?

A drug test for a tax return? Once again, I only see a problem for those who do drugs. If you don't do drugs, what's the big deal?

Also, drug testing... sounds like a way to CREATE JOBS! You'll need screeners, testers, people to do all of this! It sounds like a way to get thousands of people off of welfare and working!

[edit on 26-3-2009 by JMasters]

reply to post by Mekanic


So you think that spending 4 trillion of our taxpayer dollars each time a welfare check is handed out is justifiable? LOL

Originally posted by saabster5
reply to post by Mekanic

 

So you think that spending 4 trillion of our taxpayer dollars each time a welfare check is handed out is justifiable? LOL

But it's ok that they eat up how much of my hard earned money? Drop the welfare program, period. Then they have to work.

reply to post by Mekanic


That is a better solution than introducing drug testing. I don't agree that anyone should make a buck for free, but adding more cost to something that a small percentage abuses is just ludicrous.

And the drug tests wouldn't have to be every month to collect a check. They could be popped at random, on random people. You get a call to come in for a test, if you fail, or don't show up, you don't get the next months check. That would be a way to do so with spending 400 Trillion every time a check goes out.

reply to post by Mekanic


That's the whole point of "random" testing.

It is not done on everyone, every month.

In the testing we do where I work, I might go 8 months without getting tested. Or, I could get tested one week, then get called back to be tested the following week. It is all random.

reply to post by skeptic1


We once had a random testing threat. All of about three people got popped for tests, and we haven't heard of it again since. This was over two years ago. Now the only people in the company who get tested are new hires before start date, and CDL holders, because it's law.

Originally posted by Mekanic

Originally posted by Blaine91555
reply to post by Mekanic

 

...and you would rather have them and their children homeless and without food on the streets? Explain that to me. How will that help?

I would rather they get off their lazy rear ends and get jobs like the rest of us have to. I bust my butt every day to support my family and keep a roof over their heads.

So do many of them my Freind. So do many of them. You ever put in a day as a Construction Laborer or served a bunch of loosers in a Denny's. Should we perhaps put them and their innocent children up against a wall and have a bunch of drunk Rednecks shoot them dead?

People on drugs need treatment. They take drugs to self-medicate. They can't go to an MD and get prescriptions for a cabinet full of drugs like most of the country does.

I'm not talking about Gang Bangers and big time Dealers here. We are talking about ordinary people who are unhappy and turn to drugs just like everyone else does except they can't get a prescription from an Upper Middle Class MD who writes his Patients Prescriptions for anything they want.

They are no worse than anyone who sucks down a half case of beer on Saturday night and then pretends they are not addicted to a horrible drug. They are no worse than a Congressman who drinks a Fifth of Fine Scotch on the weekend and then pretends to be holier than thou even though they use the most dangerous drug on earth all of the time.

We are talking about real people here and real children who are already living horrible lives. I'm not talking about a bunch of drug crazed College Students who get money anytime they want from Mommy and Daddy. Some of these people have been brought up in homes that have been in poverty for generations. Many drug users were abused by their Parents and are self medicating to make the pain go away. To blanket label them is cruel and VERY UN-Christian.

I was a licensed Drug and Alcohol Counselor and donated a year and a half of my life to helping these people for NO PAY. Insult me all you want as I know what I'm talking about. Most of the people I saw were from bad homes, abused as children, thrown out at 16 by Redneck Parents just because they could, Mentally Ill and unable due to poverty to get help so they self medicated and the horror stories go on and on. Society thinks the answer is to throw them away. I don't care much for Society needless to say.

They are judged by people between trips to the medicine cabinet for prescribed drugs they take for the same reasons and people who self medicate in bars and from liquor stores while ignoring their children and creating yet another generation of forgotten people.

Society will throw these people away and brag about the good they have done, have a few drinks, beat their kids and go to sleep feeling good about themselves.

Go out into the street in front of your house. Look around. In at least one out of ten of those homes, and more in many communities, a child is being abused by a drunken Parent or a Parent jacked up on a Prescribed Sleeping Pill, a Prescribed Stimulant and a couple of shots of Vodka. I'm talking a normal Middle Class neighborhood here. In at least one of those middle class homes you see a Woman is being beaten regularly by her more than likely drunk Husband who goes to church every Sunday. You can be sure these folks are the first to say let the poor starve and to hell with their children.

What I learned during my short career helping these people sickened me and I look at people a lot differently than I once did. Most of us are no more than a few paychecks from joining them. Most people go to their families for help, many of these people have nobody to turn to. We look down on them and the only difference is the drunken looser next door has money and calls his Mommy who sends him a check to buy his next drink. He has no job, he is doing a drug and yet he is socially acceptable because he has family to support him.

The number of mentally ill I saw was astounding. They throw these poor sick people out in the street and then treat them like dirt and judge them when they do drugs to help with the pain. Their legitimate illness is due to a chemical imbalance in the brain, but normal people treat them as though it is their fault. You tell me who is in the wrong?

Now you want to create a whole new group of homeless and probably take their children away and put them in homes of people who just want the checks and will ignore them of abuse them. Don't lie to yourself about this, the people who take in Foster Children include a lot of people with bad intentions. These children will be thrown around from home to home and are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

Society will continue to throw a couple of bucks in a collection plate on Sunday and then make rude comments about the mentally ill, homeless and helpless in society. They will walk in large circles around them on the street and in the store on their way to pick up this weeks supply of booze for the bar in the Family Room with the 60 inch TV.

People do the things they do for a reason. People take drugs to make the pain go away while the people who are the real suppliers go to church and pretend they are superior beings.

If they had taken the money spent bailing out AIG and the banks and spent it on programs which would provide work and opportunities for the poor, homeless and unemployed there would be little or no need for welfare and, with less people suffering from related depression issues there would likely be far less dependence on drugs.

But hey, socialism must take care of the ultra-rich elite first.

Perhaps the states should consider handing out drugs with the welfare checks. The resulting pacification of the poor would be more beneficial than wasting more money on testing.

reply to post by Blaine91555


A star for YOU!!!

reply to post by Blaine91555


Ok fine, give them notice that they will be losing their welfare, and that they have a pre-determined amount of time to find jobs to support their families. If they can't, then the children can be adopted by the many responsible adults who want kids, but can't have them. They can keep doing their drugs for all I care. That's not my problem, I put the drugs out of my life. Stress? I have a Bi-polar boss, and work with a handful of people who not only have no work ethics, but can't even do their jobs right, meanwhile I'm in a company that like many, is on the verge of layoffs, because our customers have thousands of trailers, and hundreds of trucks parked.

Then I come home to two kids who are actually choosing to fail in school. I've run out of options, one goes back to his mother's house every other week and she does absolutely nothing to discipline him. I see my wife all of two hours a day, which for her is about long enough to get her work stress out, leaving me with nothing because my day is apparently nothing.

I love my wife and I love my kids, never raised a hand to any of them. I might have two beers on the weekend, unless for some reason a friend is in town and we go out for a couple hours. So I get no stress relief. I'm not jacked up on heroin or coke, vicodin or percacet. If they can't deal with it, it's not my problem, but they can not deal with it on their own, without my money.

UN-Christian. I like that, use religion to reason with an athiest.

Been fun arguing with you, I look forward to doing so again, but for now I'm off to bed. I have to get up and work tomorrow so I can pay for CEOs to rip me off and support welfare cases.

[edit on 26-3-2009 by Mekanic]

reply to post by Blaine91555


What is your solution, then?

Continue as is with all the abuses of the system?
Cut the system off completely?
Massive regulation and reform that will create a new slew of problems?

With privileges come responsibilities. Public assistance (welfare) needs to come with strings attached or the abuse of the system, the "lifestyle" some turn it into, continues.

Originally posted by Mekanic

But it's ok that they eat up how much of my hard earned money? Drop the welfare program, period. Then they have to work.

Thats a good question. How much of your hard earned money do those welfare people eat up?

I am curious with the amount of outrage some here express how much exactly it is costing them.

This would have two effects:

1. Force drug-addicted poor people into either homeless shelters or prison

2. Make welfare more socially acceptable.

A few days ago, I sold an XBox 360 game system - 300 bucks - to a lady who paid for it with the cash portion of her Access Card. That's right, she blew 300 bucks - a month's worth of food - on a video game console, and she did it with money she took from hard working taxpayers by pretending she "needed it."

People use their welfare money to buy cigarettes all the time. People use it to buy alcohol, too. Or, they'll buy a bunch of food with their Grub Stubs and then turn around and blow their own money on the cig's and booze.

Not only should we test them for drugs, but we should also have a system in place to see what else they're buying that they don't need. If they spend 60 dollars a month of their food stamps on potato chips and Hershey bars, then 60 bucks gets deducted from their next food stamp payout.

I hate to sound really cruel, but the fact of the matter is that if people have cable television, or more than one phone number people can reach you on, or Internet access, or a house full of beer/junk food/cigarettes/etc... well, they aren't actually all that needy and they should be booted off welfare. Period!

Originally posted by skeptic1


I like this idea.

Many jobs in this country require random drug testing, so why not welfare and state assistance recipients?

People from all walks of life receive government assistance, so they can't say it is profiling or racist or prejudiced. It does send the message (hopefully) that if you are a drug addict or test positive for drugs when you are assisted by the government and the tax payers, you might not have that assistance for much longer.

www.foxnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

As long as they start checking for high cholesterol, alcoholics and people who smoke ciggys, people who engage in unsafe sex, people who sky dive or bungee jump, people who are anorexic or bulimic, people who speed, people who drink coffee, people who jay walk or run, people who don't run, people who enjoy wine with dinner, people who smoke cigars, people who use the internet for pleasure, people who refuse to weal helmets, people who have a family history of cancer, people who ingest too much salt, people who snore, people who are insomniac..... etc etc.

then sure, I agree with it too.

If not, then who's business is it for anyone to stick their noses into a persons private personal time. As long as the requirements for any given task are met, be it working or unemployed, and no one is put in harms way who cares?

I actually feel its an invasion into private life for most private companies to demand drug tests - just as it would be if they suddenly decided that they didn't want to employ smokers... (obvious exceptions from the above where testing would be necessary - medical profession - police etc etc)....

But I think it's justified in welfare recipients for the following reason...

If you receive state cash - then you should be using it for essentials, not spending it on drugs... and I'm not even anti drugs as such.

I don't think the state should be telling anyone how to spend their money... except when it's their money.

If it stops people coming and asking for more cash for emergency food stamps... or having to waste more cash in rehab programmes, jail etc... then fine by me.

If I were taking welfare money (and believe me, since losing my job 5 months ago, I'm close to having to take welfare)... I would be buying food, paying my rent and heating my home - and I don't think there'd be much left for me to worry about after that... welfare isn't much to live on.

[edit on 26-3-2009 by Dutty_Rag]

[edit on 26-3-2009 by Dutty_Rag]

Can we say illegal search and seizure? Being poor does not probable cause make young padawan learners.