Drug screening for TANF recipients only makes sense

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Drug screening for TANF recipients only makes sense

The ridiculous liberal nonsense that Arkansas’ plan to require drug screening and testing of Arkansans who apply for certain government hand-outs is absolutely absurd, and it is a waste of Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s valuable time to defend or explain the program.

For instance, Ellie Wheeler, who calls herself senior policy analyst for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, says the program has poor results in other states and the money for the program would be better spent on “reading programs for children.” What did she say?

The naysayers are making every effort to spin this situation in an entirely negative direction with claims of failed results, applicants lying on the applications and that the tax dollars spent on weeding out drug addicts could be better spent on such government programs that specifically deal with childhood education.

And, if that isn’t pathetic enough, let us point out that as originally filed, the legislation called for creation of a two-year pilot program in counties that border any state with drug screening or testing for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients, but after liberal concerns were raised that targeting only some areas might be unconstitutional, weak kneed career politicians added a line stating, “The pilot program shall include the population statewide as determined by the Department of Workforce Services.

Furthermore, the program will not test everyone but calls for questions to be added to Arkansas’ TANF application. Only if, in the answers to the questions or any other actions, an applicant shows signs of possible illegal drug use, he or she will be asked to submit to a drug test.

A person who refuses to be tested will lose TANF benefits for six months. Aperson who takes the test and has a positive result for illegal drugs will be referred to a treatment program. The screening and testing program does not pay for the treatment.

Hutchinson is making it clear, and we could not agree more, the objective of this legislation is not to cut people off of a welfare benefit. The objective is to reduce drug dependence.

It is appropriate, as the governor said, for the Department of Workforce Services to encourage people to end drug dependency and become employable. Now who can argue with that?

“The objective for TANF or other welfare recipients is to identify those individuals that are drug dependent, get them into treatment, not cut off benefits, get them into treatment and get them back to being productive and working and create work opportunities,” Hutchinson said.

The governor’s agenda has been made clear from the beginning and that is simply to better educate, better prepare and better train the tens of thousands of Arkansans who are now dependent upon government hand-outs.

Let us remind our readers that the single largest agency in Arkansas is the Department of Human Services that employees over 7,000 employees and cost billions of dollars each year.

Every effort must be made to make as many of these Arkansans dependent upon the government to exist to become more responsible and capable of supporting themselves and their families.