Sauce for the Goose

Yesterday’s post about the effort to expose the “reasoning” behind Senate Bill 371 got me thinking about equal treatment and its notable absence from other brilliant proposals currently wending their way through Indiana’s legislative process. (As you may recall, SB 371 “protects” women who want prescriptions for abortion pills, and the proposed amendment would similarly have “protected” men wanting pills for erectile dysfunction.)

For example, what would a more balanced approach mean for the bill requiring drug testing of welfare recipients?

So far, the arguments against that measure have been boring–the typical logical, evidence-based objections that routinely fail to persuade our lawmakers. The Indiana Coalition for Human Services, for example, has pointed out that Florida implemented such a program and found it to be ineffective and costly (only 2% tested positive). Others have noted that the available tests are not well-suited for a “pass/fail” situation. Legislative Services estimates the first-year cost to be 1.2 million, much more than is likely to be saved. Etcetera.

Wrong arguments! Logic has rarely prevailed at the Statehouse, and cost-effectiveness is not a concept embraced by our elected culture and class warriors.

So I say, pile on! Not only should TANF recipients be tested, so should all the other welfare moochers who are enriching themselves at taxpayers’ expense. Let’s start with corporate welfare, with the beneficiaries of crony capitalism–the coal-gasification boondoggle,the business enterprises that have persuaded lawmakers to grant them favorable tax treatment, the owners of sports teams we subsidize, and those like ACS that are making big bucks providing services like parking meters–taking a major chunk of the money that the city would otherwise have available for public purposes.

Perhaps we could require drug testing as a condition of getting an education voucher. And let’s not forget all the elected officials–10,400 of them, thanks to Indiana’s archaic township system–who are suckling at the public you-know-what. In fact, we should test everyone paid with tax dollars–teachers, police officers, firefighters, clerks in the City-County Building…Surely, those of us whose tax dollars pay their salaries are entitled to know whether our money is going to substance abusers.

Proponents of drug testing for welfare recipients justify that proposal by pointing to the expenditure of tax dollars. By that logic, we should test everyone we are supporting or enriching with public funds.

What’s sauce for the goose ought to be sauce for the gander.

9 Comments

  1. Sheila; what I found most ridiculous about that proposed bill was the requirement that a welfare recipient who tests positive for drugs must go into rehab. How are they expected to afford rehab if they qualify for welfare to live? Also many welfare recipients have health problems and are on medications that could cause them to “fail” the drug test. Because the GOP considers people receiving Social Security, Social Security Disability, Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps to be “moochers”; must we also be included on that test list? As for that trans-vaginal probe to protect women; I consider that only a step above female castration. Indiana is coming closer and closer to becoming a third world country in the middle of America with its archaic laws and mid-1900 outlook on women’s place in society. We continue to march backward in time and the pace is picking up.

  2. What about those people who take the mortgage interest deduction on their taxes, while posing as upstanding citizens? I say drug-test them all!

  3. I told a co-worker the other day that this situation could be easily solved if we just legalized drugs or stopped welfare. Either or both are fine with me, but I think the former would be a more productive piece of legislation, as it would decrease crime, court costs, and prison expenditures while the latter just allows the state to allocate that money into something else.

  4. The biggest problem with legalizing drugs is that too many rich white folk make tons of money putting people in jail & then housing them. The prison industrial complex is a huge money maker. They LOVE the war on drugs. It keeps their jails full of otherwise productive people. I visit New Castle Correctional Facility regularly. (A FOR PROFIT company) It is loaded with people who just need treatment. Stupid.
    Costly. Wastful by any measure.

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