Posted on 01/31/2015 2:18:27 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Scott Walker has had a good week. The press is googly-eyed over him, waxing on about how he could just win this thing, and he's still rolling on his high from last weekend's Freedom Summit. Of course, that's not really something to write home about when you're besting the likes of Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee.
He's got that populist message down pat just like his other friends on the campaign trail. Income inequality! Deteriorating middle class! And he's so concerned about those things he's going to govern on that basis, right?
Walker has a real problem on his hands, because while he's basking in the afterglow, he still has to govern. It turns out he's not doing that awfully well.
Wisconsin’s low-income workers and some members of Congress are speaking out against Governor Scott Walker’s call for making people on public assistance undergo a drug test. Governor Walker confirmed in a Q and A at the conservative American Action Forum in DC on Friday that the 2015 budget he will unveil Tuesday will include measures that cover those who need food stamps, Medicaid and unemployment benefits, among other programs for those in poverty.
Walker claimed his motivation for the controversial move was feedback he’d received from Wisconsin companies. “As I traveled my state, I hear employers, small business owners say, overwhelming: ‘We have jobs. We just need workers. And we need two things: people who know how to show up every day for work, five days a week, and gimme someone who can pass a drug test,’” he said.
Now here's how that plays out with real people who need assistance.
For Wisconsin workers who currently depend on public assistance, like 21-year-old Milwaukee waitress Peyton Smith, the burden of the law would be much more personal.
“For [Governor Walker] to put another barrier in front of us is like saying we’re guilty, but we’re not guilty,” Smith told ThinkProgress. “It’s already hard to go down there and file for government assistance. We have to report in every day, fill out papers. Now I have to take the time out of my busy schedule to take a drug test? Come on!”
Epps-Addison, who depended on food stamps when she began law school at the start of the Great Recession in 2008, echoed Smith’s difficult experience in signing up for public benefits.
“There were times even I couldn’t navigate the process, as a law student with a college degree,” she said. “The system is set up to disempower people and make them frustrated enough to give up before receiving the help they need.”
Smith, who has a three-year-old daughter and another baby due soon, works about 20 hours a week at Denny’s — though she has repeatedly requested full-time employment. Because it’s a tipped job, she makes just $2.33 an hour, and currently relies on food stamps to feed her family.
“I’m willing to work. I’m not lazy at all,” she said. “But the jobs we can get are horrible, low pay, and we can’t get the hours we need. As a parent, it just sucks. I want things that are healthy for her, but the fruits and vegetables she needs to grow as young child are expensive.”
Scott Walker, like the party he represents, is awesome at tossing around the simple solution sound bite. Need workers? Drug test the ones on welfare! Never mind that they're likely not skilled at building furniture or whatever jobs he's talking about. When employers say they need people to show up who can pass a drug test, what they're really saying is that they have some nice minimum wage jobs over here with long hours, shifts, and little in the way of pay and benefits.
And please, never mind about that pesky unconstitutional thing. Scotty will make that go away...somehow.
...Now I have to take the time out of my busy schedule...
Poor dear is too busy to hold down a full time job
Very good idea Governor Walker.
Sure America needs (badly) to return American jobs right here, and to stop importing everything from China.
But we also need to be on the left, to stop ruining America’s working age people.
Very good move, Governor.
This is why Scott Walker would make a fantastic candidate. Drug Testing should be a requirement for welfare. All welfare and especially food stamps.
Don’t you love the law student mooching off of the taxpayer?
This is satire—right?
Good idea. But many good ideas have been struck down by judges who are allowed to have way too much power. I recall many years ago one judge in Arizona even ruled on school budgets.
Well, we know what’s happening next. These clowns will be yelling ‘RACIST!!!” while rolling a joint when their welfare checks arrive.
But did anyone ever notice those with real power, control, those in charge of safety and control over the lives of others are never randomly drug tested?
We're talking almost everyone in government at all levels. Including unionized cops, firemen, Congress, teachers, the POTUS, judges, prosecutors, IRS, senators, and the drug testers themselves are not randomly tested...and on and on...
Those lower on the food chains are such easy targets...
But what is Walker’s present stand on amnesty?
How selfish. He should test the liberals also so they won’t howl so much.
Because we all know only black people do drugs.
I think everyone should be drug tested ... as drugs (not prescriptions from doctors) are the SCOURGE of our society!
I think. it would be a good idea to also expand drug testing to those wishing to vote. Too many dopeheads are voicing their leftist views at the ballot box. The so-called "election" of hussein was tainted by not only the well-documented cases of fraud but also by those not in control of their faculties by drug use. It's a well-known fact that DemonRATs hustle people to the polls after getting them high on illicit drugs.
They tried this in Florida and found that the costs of the program—the tests, the labs, the technicians, the administrators—outweighed the savings in excluding people who failed by a large margin.
Physicians/big pharma are some of the biggest drug kingpins on the planet. They’ve got a good portion of society hooked up.
Everybody knows that illegal drug sales spike every time that the EBT cards get loaded. Our tax dollars drive the Cartels money machine. Messing with that will get you killed either by the corrupt government or directly by the Cartels.
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