Governing from the Gut: Drug Testing Welfare Recipients and Other Failed Republican Ideas

One of the core beliefs of the Republican/corporatist faction in America today is that poor people are inherently lazy lawbreakers who deserve their sad fate. Despite claiming to be Christians, conservatives have no sympathy for anyone living in poverty and in fact, demonize and humiliate America’s underclass every chance they get.

Drug testing welfare recipients is a case in point. Despite having no research or data backing up their assertion that poor people are spending their welfare checks on crack, Republican governors have become addicted to the idea of drug testing citizens receiving government assistance. It should come as no surprise that this idea has proven as effective as other Right Wing fantasies like abstinence only programs and D.A.R.E., meaning it has proven to be a useless waste of time and energy.

One of the states participating in this farce is Arizona, which screened 142,000 welfare recipients during a five-year program. Three people tested positive for drugs. Seven states have spent over $1 million testing people receiving government assistance and netted less than 500 users. In other words, the costs of running these programs far, far outweigh their meager results. If these wasteful programs were being run by liberal governors, FOX News would be screaming for investigations and indictments 24/7.

George Bush once said he governed from his gut, and this seems to be the case for many Republicans in elected office. Despite failure after failure, conservatives continue to pursue programs that are based on instincts, conventional wisdom or their warped religious beliefs rather than research, science and data. And is always the case, the end result of their experiment in conservative ideology is wasted taxpayer dollars and added human suffering.

Drug testing welfare recipients: Another bad idea from conservatives

Drug testing welfare recipients is the flavor of the month among reality-challenged governors, who are, of course, mostly Republicans. There are 12 states that currently carry out this demeaning and degrading procedure, and another 12 are considering implementation. Florida, which had a drug-testing requirement for people on welfare, was forced to shut it down after four months by a federal judge. Of the 4,086 people tested during that period, 2.6% tested positive. That’s fewer than 10 people.

Assuming that people on welfare are more likely to use drugs than others is just one extension of the conservative belief that if you are in need of welfare from the state, there’s something wrong with you. People on welfare, goes the thinking, are inherently lazy losers who are simply looking for a handout from the government. They are subhuman, and therefore we can do things to them that we wouldn’t consider doing to others. There aren’t any serious proposals out there to drug test political candidates.

Drug testing is not just insulting and demeaning, it also flies in the face of American jurisprudence, the foundation of which is that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Conservatives want welfare recipients to prove their innocence before receiving aid. And how can we look ourselves in the mirror and punish the already down and out for using drugs when they point to George Bush or Barack Obama or any of a number of other successful individuals who have admitted using drugs?

Forcing welfare recipients to undergo drug tests is just one more in a very long line of bad ideas from conservatives. Hopefully, court challenges like the one in Florida will work to end this practice nationwide in the near future.