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Today's Poll!House OKs drug tests for Missouri welfare recipients
Thursday, January 27, 2011
The Missouri House endorsed a bill Wednesday to conduct drug tests of welfare applicants if the state suspects that they are using illegal drugs.
Under the bill, people who fail the drug test would lose their benefits under the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program for one year. The bill’s supporters said taxpayers do not want people to use welfare money to buy drugs.
“Clearly, this federal government had no intent of including drug users in these cash benefits,” said sponsoring Rep. Ellen Brandom, R-Sikeston. She also said drug testing helps prepare welfare recipients for jobs since many employers require the tests.
About 43,700 families, totaling about 112,000 people, receive TANF benefits each month in Missouri, according to a fiscal estimate included with the bill.
The House gave first-round approval to the bill by a 121-37 vote. A second vote is needed to send the bill to the Senate, where similar bills have been filed.
The House bill would allow children of parents who fail drug tests to continue receiving their share of the benefits. The benefits would be given to a third party who would use the money to care for the child. Supporters said that would protect children from drug-addicted parents and would give parents an incentive to overcome their addictions.
Rep. Kiki Curls, D-Kansas City, said taking away parents’ welfare benefits would still hurt children because there would be less money available for general household expenses such as rent.
“Children will suffer even if only the parent’s benefits are eliminated,” she said.
The House bill was amended Wednesday to prevent the state’s Department of Social Services from discriminating on the basis of race or ethnicity when it decides who is tested for drugs. Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City, who sponsored the amendment, said he was more concerned about racial discrimination than discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation.
Under the bill, people who fail the drug test would not lose their benefits until after an administrative hearing. The fiscal estimate predicted that the attorney general’s office would have to hire at least one additional assistant attorney general and another legal secretary to handle the additional caseload.
A Senate committee considered three bills similar to the House measure in a hearing Tuesday. Those bills would take away benefits for as long as three years if a person fails a drug test.
Colleen Coble, the executive director for the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, told the committee that such bills would be ineffective if the state does not pay for treatment for people who test positive. She said people would stay addicted and use money to support their habit that they would normally use for child care.
“You’re going to have incredibly poor kids with an addicted parent, with even fewer dollars in the household,” she said.
The Senate committee will likely vote on its version of the bill next week.
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Comments
bluenurse 2 years, 3 months ago
Drug screening is very expensive. Unless the person producing the screen is supervised, there will be all kinds of ways around this. Then somebody would have to check the validity of prescribed drugs that could give a positive urine screen. Many answers needed. Still, many of us are screened in order to get a job/continue working in that job.
usmc00 2 years, 3 months ago
This is wonderful. And they can get drug kits like the army recruiting office that are quick and simple. they don't cost much and work like a birth control test. This just made my day.
jeffcitygirl 2 years, 3 months ago
Um..what is a birth control test?
JMO 2 years, 3 months ago
I suspect he means pregnancy test. A test to see if your birth control worked. LOL!
usmc00 2 years, 3 months ago
lol ya your right we always called it the bc test to see if it was working. I forgot its really the prego test.
clingingredneck 2 years, 3 months ago
If they test positive for drugs why are you leaving the children with them????!!!! Does anyone else see the illogical nature of this statement?! Test them. If they fail take the benefits and the kids. If you really want to help the kids don't leave them with meth'ed up parents you duffus!!!!
jeffcitygirl 2 years, 3 months ago
What if it's just pot? Do people that smoke a little weed make unfit parents?
MK 2 years, 3 months ago
I'd even argue that some of them make better parents.
bluesfan13 2 years, 3 months ago
That's not what MK said, but that was a nice rant of righteous indignation there. Congrats.
MK 2 years, 3 months ago
yeah, whatever it takes to tantalize her trollie self a little I suppose. Seriously, If I had a choice at the random grab bag of life, I would much rather have been raised by a parent that smokes pot than one that drinks if I had to choose between the two. I've been around my fair share of pot smokers and for the most part, they are pretty open minded, productive and trustworthy people as compared to any other cross section of the communities I lived in.
MK 2 years, 3 months ago
If destroying society is defined by moving it further away from your pin pointed mindset and throwing off the chains then I am all for it and then some.
Where's the dynamite?
bluesfan13 2 years, 3 months ago
And you accuse me of reading into things what I want to see.
There are people who smoke pot, who happen to still be good parents. There are people who don't smoke pot who happen to be terrible parents. He did not say that pot smokers make better parents than non-pot smokers. That's something you made up to make this fit your idea of the world.
clingingredneck 2 years, 3 months ago
Did you see "Meth'd up"? And "just pot" is still illegal in the state, so yeah, even just pot. Either you are breaking the law or you aren't. You can't be a little bit pregnant and you can't "just smoke a little pot, but I don't use drugs". I think pot should be legalized, but right now it's still out of bounds. Go to California to get stoned.
newone 2 years, 3 months ago
I have seen people while they are stoned and NO they do not make the best parents at all!
MK 2 years, 3 months ago
What bluesfan13 said,
bluesfan13 11 minutes ago And you accuse me of reading into things what I want to see.
There are people who smoke pot, who happen to still be good parents. There are people who don't smoke pot who happen to be terrible parents. He did not say that pot smokers make better parents than non-pot smokers. That's something you made up to make this fit your idea of the world.
We know the Catholic church has its issues with pedophilia, do we punish all Catholic leaders for that or the ones who do wrong to others?
What about credit cards? There is a percentage of society that wrecks their finances, their families and their homes through their negligent use of credit, should we outlaw credit cards and also punish the segment of the population who can use them responsibly just because some people trash their lives through their misuse of them?
Same thing with alcohol. There are terrible parents who use it and terrible parents who don't use it. It wrecks lives when abused but many of us can use it recreationally with little or no problem. Why is it that all of us, responsible or not, aren't thrown before a judge and have our freedoms taken away because some of us can't handle using the substance? My answer to that is the influence of big business in our political system and it's the drug of choice amongst lawmakers and law enforcers.
Though there are deadbeats who are drug abusers, child rapists in the clergy, people who lose their homes and families due to negligent borrowing, there are also many productive people amongst us in every walk of life who are good, honest, decent and caring people who use substances such as marijuana and alcohol recreationally and responsibly as well as use their religious influence upon others with good intentions and keep their ability to borrow money responsible and under control.
There is no reason at all to commit wholesale pogroms against all the people due to the mistakes of some within their communities. We should focus on the bad people who actually do bad things to others and attack no further than that.
joda 2 years, 3 months ago
I doubt that the fed will be picking up the tab for this... right now with the state's budget problems, the last thing they should be doing is passing laws that will cost the state more money. drug tests cost money, admin hearings cost money, the third party distribution of funds for children cost money. With DSS setup/training/admin costs means that this "program" is going to cost missouri taxpayers millions PER YEAR!
What are they going to do, lay off more state employees to fund this??
JMO 2 years, 3 months ago
I totally agree. They only mention the need for one attorney and secretary in the AG's office. But someone has to do the testing, do the referrals, handle the caseload for the people being tested and asking for hearings, handle the adminsitration of the funds to the 3rd parties, and you need a hearing officer to do the hearings too. All the while, DSS keeps losing employees to the job cuts. The AG has the least amount of need for additional people in this process. And of course, there's the additional costs of just the paperwork and testing and training. DSS keeps getting it's budget cut. Where's the money coming from for this?
JCLifer 2 years, 3 months ago
Take the money out of the benefit payments as an administrative cost.
JMO 2 years, 3 months ago
I'm sure that's what they are thinking, and it sounds like a good idea, but I don't know that I see that working in the end. You can't take from everyone to test a few and those that get tested and fail the test will be in the vast minority and there may not be enough people losing benefits to pay for it.
But this actually comes up every little bit in the legislature and has never passed, so we're probably talking about a moot point anyway.
jeffcitygirl 2 years, 3 months ago
The benefit paymetn to the parent that would be cut is $58. You think that will cover all of the above. Yeah right!
MK 2 years, 3 months ago
For a 292 dollar payment, that seems like an excessive amount of wasteful spending, percentage wise, in order to stomp a boot down on the throat of a welfare recipient that you don't even know is using drugs in the first place. So if they do catch one out of ten probably even less than that actually, who use drugs and are willing to pay $580 bucks or more a month to save $292 by denying that one household those cash benefits, raise people's taxes in order to cover the cost overruns, people will still be trying to sell it as a great idea I bet. People just hate the poor with a passion in our society.
jeffcitygirl 2 years, 3 months ago
And the opposite side, what if the caseworker has a personal grudge against the client. What about racial profiling? I'm not opposed to drug testing for clients, however, this is a badly written bill, it needs to be random and fair and done with all legal ramifications completely addressed.
gofish 2 years, 3 months ago
This is just plain discriminatory. If you're poor you are automatically a suspected drug user. Alcohol is the most abused drug in the United States. I see this as nothing more than a politically correct attack on poor people. With the cost of an attorney, legal assistant, and drug screenings this bill will cost far more than it will "save" by cutting a user from TANF. In a time of budgetary crisis we cannot afford to legislate on principle alone.
jeffcitygirl 2 years, 3 months ago
Partially true Graceful...as the opposite can be claimed - poverty is a cause of drug use. Lack of options, support, daily struggles cause one to want to escape reality by taking mood altering drugs. They also get into drug dealing as a method to make money to get OUT of poverty, but unfortunately the drug seller is usually always a drug user so they never make the profit they sought.
bluesfan13 2 years, 3 months ago
--"It can be claimed but that doesn' make it true."-- That's rich, coming from the guy who claims that promiscuity causes homosexuality.
asb 2 years, 3 months ago
I would disagree. Cause and effect may be difficult to measure, but poverty causes drug abuse more than drug abuse causes poverty. Granted there're lots of rich abusers, but poverty is more cause than effect.
jeffcitygirl 2 years, 3 months ago
Exactly. Everyone knows that anything the government has to pay for (drug tests and lab work) will cost more than the $58 they are going to lose to the parent who tests positive.
JCLifer 2 years, 3 months ago
Not discriminatory. Just a means to make people accountable for our tax dollars. You can be poor all you want, but if you want to suckle at the government teat you better be drug-free. Want to take drugs- fine. Just don't ask for welfare money.
clingingredneck 2 years, 3 months ago
NOT TRUE! I'm not "rich" but I'm not "poor" either, and I have to take drug tests for my job. This is not an attack on poor people, it's making them conform to the rules that the rest of society has to conform to!
MK 2 years, 3 months ago
I like how you point out the hypocrisy.
Seriously, if we are going to spend $5 to save $1 on this drug issue, than why isn't the State looking to force these people to spend that money they are given more wisely? No movie theater tickets, no cable TV, no Xmas and birthday presents for the kids, forbid church donations, no traveling and no anything that isn't deemed as the most important neccesities to spend money on. Why doesn't the State just make these recipients provide receipts for everything they spend their money on, take a full acounting of it and put it under scrutiny and judgement?
I don't support this at all because, alike to the drug testing, I am sure it will cost much more than its going to save but why not just take full control over their lives if the State is going to be paying to sustain them? In my opinion, that's one of the greater objectives of our current form of coorporate run government at the state and national levels.
JMO 2 years, 3 months ago
I think that, in general, the population who has never been on welfare nor worked with people on welfare, have the belief that the ones who are on welfare are lazy druggies who don't want a better life. I admit, there are those. I grew up (many years ago) with people who literally had several generations on welfare, but I truly don't that they are the majority. I'm sure jeffcitygirl knows better than I, but the largest number of people on TANF are probably single moms. Single parents or those taking care of children not their own are normally the ones drawing TANF. There are two-parent households that get it, but I think they are a definite minority. And there are requirements, they now can only draw for 5 years, lifetime, total. There are school and job search requirements. But, most importantly, if they are doing drugs, does anyone really think that taking away $58 a month is going to do anything about that? If the fear of jail doesn't stop them, taking away that little sum certainly won't. I agree, welfare recipients shouldn't do drugs. In fact, I don't believe anyone should do drugs....yes, even pot, not because it's evil, but because at this moment in time, it is illegal. But I don't think this bill does anything to help anyone.
MommaR 2 years, 3 months ago
personally i think if they test positive just once they need to lose all benfits....for life, no tanf, food stamps nothing
midmogy 2 years, 3 months ago
Will it cost the state money? Yes it will. But this is exactly the type of program the state should be spending money on. I am sure we could take away the governors flight privileges and give him a hybrid to drive around the state with. There now we have more than enough money to pay for the drug tests. I am not trying to hold anyone to a higher standard than myself. If I get hurt at work I get a drug test, or even if they just feel like it, they can test me. So why would I want my tax dollars given to people that do not have to live by the same rules I do? No I do not belive that every person on welfare is a druggie. Far from it. I am not a druggie, I still get tested for my job. Some of you on here seem to think that it is some sort of sin to drug test people that are getting free money. My question to you is, can you write me a check so I can quit both my jobs and college, and go smoke up( I promise I will not inhale!).
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