An essential part of the Republican cabal’s war against America’s
poor has been to drug-test welfare recipients, as part of their
relentless campaign to paint the poor as lazy, as moochers, as
drug-addicts with no incentive to seek real employment. It’s very far
from the truth; the American poor are victims of Wall Street-engineered
income inequality and the plots of wealthy oligarchs to keep the poor
repressed and maintain a permanent underclass of exploitable labor.New
data shows just how wasteful and insulting the welfare drug testing
program is. USA Today reports that the state of Arizona screened 142,000
welfare recipients- and found only THREE failed tests over a five year
program. This saved the state around $3500 from going into the hands of
“drug addicts” – out of $45 million distributed through the Temporary
Assistance For Needy Families program.
Collectively, seven
states have spent a $1 million on drug testing their welfare recipients-
and together have netted under 500 positive cases. Virginia just
abandoned plans to test their citizens after realizing it would cost
$1.5 million and save only $229,000. It’s a disgraceful waste of
taxpayer dollars in an insulting and presumptuous program that the date
shows only serves to give credibility to the anti-poor narrative that
FOX News pundits love to talk up so much.
No comments:
Post a Comment