thehill.com — Hatch introduced an amendment to the tax extenders bill that would require those who are applying for some of the benefits in that bill, including unemployment and welfare benefits, to pass a drug test in exchange for the benefits.
Jun 16, 2010 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountJun 16, 2010
*that your EMPLOYER paid into it. You can't claim that the money paid into unemployment would otherwise have gone towards your paycheck.
xophermvJun 17, 2010
Unemployment insurance is not welfare.
solistusJun 17, 2010
Since you kept a reasonable tone, I'll try to do the same and be civil. 4 counter-arguments:1- I think most people would agree that it's pretty "un-American" for the government to monitor each and every expense a person makes and decide how appropriate it is, unemployment benefits or no. Why does it make sense for drugs to be the one 'frivolous expense' that they crack down on so harshly, especially when you can spend every dime legally on alcohol?2- Not all drugs are expensive. Even fewer would be if they weren't illegal; most of the most popular ones simply grow from the earth. The expensive part is hiding the production from legal authorities, smuggling the product throughout the country and distributing it. Why is it harmful to society's interests for an unemployed man to grow his own cannabis and then smoke it, for example? How is it fair or reasonable for this nonviolent transgression of an unrelated law (one which, as you can probably guess, I strongly disagree with in the first place, but that's a separate debate) to disqualify that man for unemployment?3- Taxpayers don't fund unemployment; the unemployed person did with the deductions from their past paychecks. Of all the 'welfare' programs to target with this sort of thing, unemployment seems the least reasonable. It's not the government making sure its charitable funds are used appropriately; it's the government taking your money when you worked under the promise of unemployment, then changing the rules to find an excuse to keep that money because of an unrelated issue (your drug use).4- Even if you accept the premise that it's legitimate for the government to take measures to prevent abuses of welfare and/or unemployment funds, does that justify mandatory drug testing for EVERY recipient without requiring any reasonable suspicion of drug use? It's well established in legal precedent that drug tests constitute a search. Requiring a search to look for evidence of a crime when you had no reason to suspect that individual of that crime prior to the search is blatantly unconstitutional in any other context. Why should constitutional rights go out the window in the name of sniffing out potheads?
avernessJun 17, 2010
It would be poetic justice if his house was robbed by unemployed drug users who just lost their benefits and had no other options. I'd also like to see this man pass the same drug screening before anyone does anything, and be sure to screen for pharmaceuticals like oxycontin, a favorite among the wealthy.
werfwerJun 18, 2010
more cost to taxpayers versus a value add to taxpayers.
Closed AccountJun 18, 2010
Oh shut up.
bjornskiJun 20, 2010
@laminacDugg you up for admitting you could very well be wrong, and asking for a correction.What you'll probably find is that everyone else who had been defining socialism for you before was lying about it.
Closed AccountJun 20, 2010
My Gawd, Cerebus, you could not possibly be more wrong. That is not even close to true.<a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_insurance#United_States" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_insuranc ...</a>