[Updated] Wisconsin under right-wing GOP Governor and career public benefit recipient Scott Walker
ranks poorly among the 50 states on everything from job creation to clean well water to road repairs to new business start-up activity - - more facts about his record, here - - but, by God, he's figured out a way to make us first in something:
Drug-testing some low-income health care applicants before they get the aid, regardless of the cost to taxpayers or the health-care recipients state of mind.
And as to the cost to taxpayers, note the waste in this stupid power play:
Update: The GOP-led, Walker-obesiant Legislature's budget-writing committee has also approved a host of measures further restricting food stamp and other assistance to the poor.
The real message is: move out!
Drug-testing some low-income health care applicants before they get the aid, regardless of the cost to taxpayers or the health-care recipients state of mind.
And as to the cost to taxpayers, note the waste in this stupid power play:
As of March, about 1,900 W-2 participants had been screened for drugs, with only nine of those — less than one-half of 1% — referred for treatment and none successfully completing it, according to the Legislature's nonpartisan budget office.If you want to drug-test Wisconsinites when public dollars might at risk and whose judgment might be clouded by substance abuse, how about testing the people who repeatedly gave away or pocketed millions of public dollars without routine accountability?
Update: The GOP-led, Walker-obesiant Legislature's budget-writing committee has also approved a host of measures further restricting food stamp and other assistance to the poor.
The real message is: move out!
When will we drug test politicians? I have to pee in a cup for every job I get.
ReplyDeleteFlorida had such a program — which produced no reliable estimates of drug use among welfare recipients — before it got struck down by the courts.
ReplyDelete“According to state data gathered by ThinkProgress, the seven states with existing programs — Arizona, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah — are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to ferret out very few drug users. The statistics show that applicants actually test positive at a lower rate than the drug use of the general population. The national drug use rate is 9.4 percent. In these states, however, the rate of positive drug tests to total welfare applicants ranges from 0.002 percent to 8.3 percent, but all except one have a rate below 1 percent. Meanwhile, they’ve collectively spent nearly $1 million on the effort, and millions more may have to be spent in coming years.”