• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Orrin Hatch Calls For Drug Testing Welfare Recipients

Against it for the reasons already mentioned. Most people who are hardcore drug addicts and are on welfare are poor in the first place. Remove the assistance and they fall deeper. I know some people are so selfish that they don't care if other people fall through the gutter, but I promise you'll start to care when you see an influx of homeless people roaming the streets and turning up dead in plain site. Because you live in America, you've never seen what that looks like. Take a little trip to Asia and you'll see what it looks like when the system completely abandons people. It's rather disturbing.

The pure punishment approach doesn't work, and I wish people would get past the notion already.


Oh yeah, we're seeing that with the Leftists, everyday.
 
MO is a lot of welfare recipients sell drugs, but don't use.


For what it's worth, I would say this is a highly unlikely scenario.
 
It MAY save enough money in the long run to cover the costs. Not sure.
.

True but drug testing is an expensive endeavor, if this ever gets onto the welfare reform table, there has to be a plan to pay for it. (granted we just nuke welfare at the federal level anyway)
 
There are a number of large holes in your idea, but to address just the monetary ones:

1) Taking kids away from their parents would be FAR more expensive that the measly $400 bucks a month welfare recipients get now.
2) Random drug testing would be FAR more expensive than the measly $400 bucks welfare recipients get now.

And that's not even addressing the obvious "humanitarian" issues.
 
Oh yeah, we're seeing that with the Leftists, everyday.

Thank you. Another post that demonstrates nothing but your partisan hackery.
 
For what it's worth, I would say this is a highly unlikely scenario.

This is what I have read, but I don't have a source. Why do you believe this to be highly unlikely. I also read they have a high death rate at a young age. If we're talking the ghetto I believe it's possible. They may use for recreation, but it's not a hardcore addiction. Many of the dealers have kids with women who are on welfare, and the women aren't hardcore users.
 
This is what I have read, but I don't have a source. Why do you believe this to be highly unlikely. I also read they have a high death rate at a young age. If we're talking the ghetto I believe it's possible. They may use for recreation, but it's not a hardcore addiction. Many of the dealers have kids with women who are on welfare, and the women aren't hardcore users.

Well, you said, "MO is a lot of welfare recipients sell drugs, but don't use."
And I said I found that scenario unlikely.
I've been around a lot of poor people- have been on assistance myself, have lived in low income housing projects.
I've also been around a lot of drug users and dealers and have been a habitual user myself in the past (although not a dealer, not in any sort of systematic way).

I've never known anybody who was deep enough into the scene to be considered a "dealer" who did not use drugs recreationally, at the very least.
I've seen movies where dealers don't use drugs.
Perhaps at the very top of the drug-dealing chain, the millionaires who control the drug trade don't use drugs. They probably never even really have to see or be around drugs, if they don't want to. They can just make business deals over the phone.

But on a street level- the kind of dealers you'd find living in poverty- it's been my experience that they're all fiends and junkies, dealing to support their own habits. Sometimes what they deal is not the same as what they do- for instance, one well-known coke dealer in my city, back in the '90s, was a heroin addict. He didn't use coke, except for the occasional speedball (heroin and coke mixed together).

Now, I've known couriers who weren't drug users.
All they'd do was transport drugs to different states.
If they had been obvious drug users, they wouldn't have been entrusted with this lucrative job.

It is my opinion, however, that most street-level dealers, who actually personally handle drugs and personally deal with buyers, are in fact also drug users.
Are most of them addicts?
It depends on the drug, but- especially in the case of stimulant drugs like cocaine and meth- probably not.
Once a dealer becomes an addict, he's on a downward trajectory, and probably won't be in business too much longer.
 
Last edited:
Against it for the reasons already mentioned. Most people who are hardcore drug addicts and are on welfare are poor in the first place. Remove the assistance and they fall deeper. I know some people are so selfish that they don't care if other people fall through the gutter, but I promise you'll start to care when you see an influx of homeless people roaming the streets and turning up dead in plain site. Because you live in America, you've never seen what that looks like. Take a little trip to Asia and you'll see what it looks like when the system completely abandons people. It's rather disturbing.

The pure punishment approach doesn't work, and I wish people would get past the notion already.

So I have to support people who have made the decision to be worthless drug users for the sake of not allowing them to be homeless?
I don't understand. Why can't we let people take responsibility for their own actions. If their actions allow them to fall into homelessness, so ****ing be it.

Explain to me again why a welfare recipient gets to sit on their ass doing drugs while I have to work hard to provide this for them?
 
I realize people don't like their tax dollars aiding drug users, but if it's recreational and occasional it's not our business.

Yes, it is our business.
Drugs are.... expensive.
Expensive things are not things welfare recipients can/should be capable of affording.

If you can afford expensive luxuries like recreational drugs, you can afford to support yourself.

The rest of us hard working Americans should not be working hard to support a bunch of loafing ass welfare recipients.

Next these welfare junkies will complain they can't get a job to get off welfare because they can't pass the drug testing to get said job.,
 
This is what I have read, but I don't have a source. Why do you believe this to be highly unlikely. I also read they have a high death rate at a young age. If we're talking the ghetto I believe it's possible. They may use for recreation, but it's not a hardcore addiction. Many of the dealers have kids with women who are on welfare, and the women aren't hardcore users.

They are welfare recipients. Why should they be "recreating" anyways. Especially "recreating" with illegal and expensive drugs.

Take your recreation and go get a 2nd or 3rd job.
 
They are welfare recipients. Why should they be "recreating" anyways. Especially "recreating" with illegal and expensive drugs.

Take your recreation and go get a 2nd or 3rd job.

Welfare isn't enough to pay all the bills. If you have kids and want them to have heat and shelter, you'll work a job that pays cash to supplement the welfare you receive.

Here's a snippet from an article I found. It's from the 1990's;

How these particular mothers made ends meet; They got 57 percent of their income from food stamps and AFDC. Roughly half the rest came from work of various kinds. The remainder came from absent fathers, boyfriends, relatives, and student loans. The work these mothers did was extraordinarily diverse. Three held regular jobs under another name, earning an average of $5 an hour. Twelve worked part time at off-the-books jobs such as bartending, catering, babysitting, and sewing that paid an average of $3 an hour.

The only well-paid work open to these women was prostitution, which paid something like $40 an hour. Four of Edin's mothers supplemented their welfare checks this way. Four others sold drugs, but three of the four sold only marijuana and earned only $3 to $5 an hour. They could presumably have earned more if they had sold crack on the street, but they sold only to acquaintances, which was much less risky. The fourth drug seller sold crack as well as marijuana and earned something like $10 an hour, but she was murdered soon after Edin interviewed her, apparently because she had not repaid her supplier.

To read the whole article:

The Real Welfare Problem | The American Prospect
 
2) Random drug testing would be FAR more expensive than the measly $400 bucks welfare recipients get now.

That ain't entirely true.

Most employers find that a drug-testing program will eliminate people with problem, and not good applicants. Drug tests for small to medium employers generally cost in the $50-$70.00 range, including collection of the sample, laboratory analysis, services of a Medial Review Officer, and communications of the results in the manner most convenient to the employer.

Intro to Employment Drug Testing for Employers and Human Resources Professionals
 
Why limit it to welfare recipients? Why not everyone who gets government money?

Why not corporate CEOs who get bailouts? Students who get student loans and grants? People who actually work for the government, from those in the military on down to the clerk at the DMV?

And how about people who get money from the government indirectly, such as through government services? Why not test everyone who wants to borrow a library book? Can't get your mail until you piss in a cup. If you use the highway, roadside test could become a common thing.

Or maybe this is just another way for politicians to attack the most helpless among us without any real concern for consistency or logic? After all, these people never vote anyway.
 
I agree, but what I am pushing for is that if any private company receives any money/grant/tax break from the government that they should be forced to drug test their employees.. that should cover everyone in the US. That is a way to deal with the problem on a national scale instead of putting a band-aid on a small part of the problem.

Given this statement, you are essentially saying that the state should not only drug test the parents, but children of welfare recipients as well? :shock:

What sort of 1930's nazi fantasy are you exactly proposing; one where the entire nation is required to take weekly chemical and psychological examinations?

Good luck getting that idea to fly. Besides, drug use in the US is a minor issue if we consider taxpayer liabilities regarding the war on drugs (federal state and local).
 
Why limit it to welfare recipients? Why not everyone who gets government money?

Why not corporate CEOs who get bailouts? Students who get student loans and grants? People who actually work for the government, from those in the military on down to the clerk at the DMV?

And how about people who get money from the government indirectly, such as through government services? Why not test everyone who wants to borrow a library book? Can't get your mail until you piss in a cup. If you use the highway, roadside test could become a common thing.

Or maybe this is just another way for politicians to attack the most helpless among us without any real concern for consistency or logic? After all, these people never vote anyway.

I think it more has to do with the logical consistency of making sure liquid assests are spent in a proper fashion. Welfare recipients are given a unique form of government assistance that relies on them to have it utilized correctly while facing significant temptations not to. There are, as your examples suggest, discrete forms of government aid that are given to different parts of society. However, only true "welfare" gives liquidity. Other forms of government help, by definition, can't be used to purchase drugs.
 
Orrin Hatch Calls For Drug Testing Welfare Recipients - Political Hotsheet - CBS News



Normally I disagree with most things this guy does but I applaud this move.

I like most forms of welfare and I believe they serve a necessary function for our society (even though they are going to need to be scaled back because of budgetary considerations, unfortunately), but there is no purpose in spending money where it does not produce any positive benefits for the individual getting the money or for society.

Sorry, but I don't applaud this move. Has Hatch ever heard of the Fourth Amendment?

But, if we are actually going to do this, then we should also include all the banksters, who took all the corporate welfare money the government doled out to them, on the taxpayer's dime. After all, they must have been on drugs to run their banks, not to mention our country, into the ground the way they did, so we at least have probable cause here. :mrgreen:
 
Last edited:
Sorry, but I don't applaud this move. Has Hatch ever heard of the Fourth Amendment?

I don't see how to 4th amendment guards against something like this. Welfare is to be thought of as more of a benefit than a right. One which you can lose through your own actions. It should also be expanded to people who continue to have children after they've gone on welfare.
 
People who actually work for the government, from those in the military on down to the clerk at the DMV?
Uhhh.... Random drug testing is a part of the Military. I don't know how many times I was drug testing in the Army in my 4 years... probably at least 6-8.



Or maybe this is just another way for politicians to attack the most helpless among us without any real concern for consistency or logic? After all, these people never vote anyway.
Maybe the "helpless among us" should stop contributing to their own helpelessness.
 
I can agree with this. I say test them, however the drug addicts will either be sucking our money through welfare or through being in prison.
 
I can agree with this. I say test them, however the drug addicts will either be sucking our money through welfare or through being in prison.

Oh well......I have no sympathy for people who ruin their lives with drugs. They made that choice.
 
So I have to support people who have made the decision to be worthless drug users for the sake of not allowing them to be homeless?

Yes. And it's not you supporting them, it's everyone. It's not your money. It's not your bank account. Your taxes account for a minuscule percentage, so stop acting like it's draining your coffers. You pay taxes so I suggest you get over it. Not everything my taxes go towards I support, but paying taxes is not an option.

I don't understand. Why can't we let people take responsibility for their own actions. If their actions allow them to fall into homelessness, so ****ing be it.

Because the welfare of society matters more than your selfishness. You may not care about an influx of homeless people and people dying in your rich country on the streets, but I do.

Explain to me again why a welfare recipient gets to sit on their ass doing drugs while I have to work hard to provide this for them?

Do you know what addiction is and why it often is not a choice?

Punishing people for a mistake they made in starting drug use is not focusing on the now. Maybe a lot of them want to quit but it's hard. Maybe rehab hasn't worked.

I believe in helping people and not giving up on them. Sorry that your philosophy differs.
 
Yes. And it's not you supporting them, it's everyone. It's not your money. It's not your bank account. Your taxes account for a minuscule percentage, so stop acting like it's draining your coffers. You pay taxes so I suggest you get over it. Not everything my taxes go towards I support, but paying taxes is not an option.



Because the welfare of society matters more than your selfishness. You may not care about an influx of homeless people and people dying in your rich country on the streets, but I do.



Do you know what addiction is and why it often is not a choice?

Punishing people for a mistake they made in starting drug use is not focusing on the now. Maybe a lot of them want to quit but it's hard. Maybe rehab hasn't worked.

I believe in helping people and not giving up on them. Sorry that your philosophy differs.

Oh I see, so they were forced to take drugs.
Gotcha.
:roll:
 
Oh I see, so they were forced to take drugs.
Gotcha.
:roll:

Oh I see, you are avoiding everything else in my post and honing in on the one thing you can try to be "right" with?

Please address the other points in my post so I can actually give you a weighted reply, otherwise stop wasting my time.
 
Back
Top Bottom