The war on poverty here in the United States continues. And I don’t mean a war as in trying to fight poverty and end it…I mean a war as in, we are fighting poor people and making their lives more miserable than they already are…
Case in point: According to a recent report in USA Today, since November 2009, when Republican Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona announced that her state would test adult welfare recipients if they felt like there was a “reasonable cause” to believe they were getting high, more than 87,000 welfare recipients have been tested.
And the total number of drug cheats caught was exactly…wait for it… one!
When they threw that person off the welfare roles, that saved the state $560. But at 500 dollars per test that’s 43 million 500 thousand dollars spent in order to save…wait for it…560 dollars! That’s a net loss of 43,499,440 taxpayer dollars! And not one person fed, clothed or housed…just hosed.
And when you consider that Governor Brewer promised over 1.7 million dollars in savings from the program because, as we all have been told, and certainly as all Republicans positively know, almost everyone on welfare uses their welfare check to buy drugs…don’t they?
But they don’t!
The fact of the matter is that people who are poor need the money to make ends meet and to pay for the basic necessities of life like housing and food and clothes and such. Poor folks are too busy just trying to survive and don’t have the desire nor the recreational time to get involved in drugs… like I guess the people who govern us do while they sit around dreaming up these truly needless and wasteful programs, born out of their overly suspicious and hateful minds.
Spending over 43 million taxpayer dollars in order to save taxpayers 550 dollars?! And not an apology in sight?! Nor an admittance of guilt, shame or malfeasance on the Arizona Republican government’s part in this insulting and misguided fiasco?!
Instead, wouldn’t you know that six other states have implemented similar programs since 2009. And when Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker, announced his presidential candidacy last week, what did he say would be one of his priorities if elected president?… Wait for it…
All welfare recipients will be required to pass a drug test prior to collecting public assistance benefits!
What we need to do in this country is have all Republicans drug tested! Because even when confronted with the facts, shown the results of their own failed policies and forced to come face to face with the fallacies of their erroneous beliefs…they continue to do and say and believe the same things…and with more vim and vigor then before!
If that isn’t a sure sign of drug abuse let alone insanity… then I’m Ronald Reagan!
