Wednesday December 05, 2012

STILL ON MOOCHER PATROL. Remember when Virginia wanted to test its welfare recipients for drugs, then found out it would be an outrageous money-loser for the state and backed off? Well, another election has come and gone and Republican members are reviving the idea, because they've found a way to lose less money on it:

"We got hung up last year on the cost, and it seems that we determined the costs aren't as great as we were told last year," said Del. Dickie Bell, R-Staunton, the bill's sponsor. "There are new methods of screening and testing used other places, and some are practical and could be applied here"...

The [original] legislation failed... after the state estimated it would cost $1.5 million to administer the tests, compared with the estimated $229,000 that would be saved by stripping benefits from those who test positive...

Republicans believe a statewide testing system is necessary to prevent taxpayer money from going to drug users.

"You're going to have some abuse no matter what you do, but you can curtail it to where it's minimal," said Del. Riley Ingram, R-Hopewell.

You don't learn till way far into the Washington Examiner story that "before Florida's [similar] law was suspended by the courts, officials found that only 2 percent of welfare recipients tested positive for drugs." Heritage Foundation wonks have been pushing the alternate line that drug testing keeps people out of the welfare system, which they describe as a savings, however speculative.

But saving money is the least of it; what they really want to do is grind their heels a little harder in the faces of the indigent. Their main argument is that welfare is not part of our common obligations to one another, but the property of Them That Gots, to be grudgingly dispensed with ever-more-onerous conditions to those creatures whose subhumanity is proven by their bad luck.

Whether they're commanding the poor to pee in a cup or demanding that the childless procreate to fulfill the will of Heaven, always remember that these people are not animated by a desire to realize a common good, but by the need to assert their superiority against all evidence.