(CNN) -- Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Sunday defended recent legislation that requires adults applying for welfare assistance to undergo drug screenings, saying the law provides "personal accountability."
"It's not right for taxpayer money to be paying for somebody's drug addiction," Scott told CNN's T.J. Holmes on Sunday. "On top of that, this is going to increase personal responsibility, personal accountability. We shouldn't be subsidizing people's addiction."\
But the ACLU of Florida, which has already filed suit against Scott over a measure requiring government employees to undergo random drug testing, disagrees, and may sue over the welfare law as well.
"What (Scott) is doing is giving ugly legitimacy to an unfortunate stereotype that has been in this country for a couple of decades -- that all welfare recipients are a bunch of drug abusers," said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida.
Scott told CNN he wants to ensure that welfare funds go to their primary target -- to disadvantaged children -- and provide people with an incentive not to use drugs. He signed the measure on June 1, calling it "the right thing for taxpayers."
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13 comments:
I agree! We are paying people to lay around and get hi, watch tv, robbing killing because of being on drugs. I am tired of supporting them....get a job and support yourself and YOUR family
I agree with drug testing for welfare recipiants. I don't want my tax money going for someones drug fix while their children still go hungry.
Bravo Governor Scott, Bravo!!!
Would like to see the numbers on what the tests will cost the state and how much they will save for each recipient kicked off the roles. The "welfare drug test" has been tried before with only a very small percent of recipients being dropped from the roles. The whole "welfare recipients sit on their butt getting high" sounds like a red herring to me.
IT IS ABOUT TIME!!!!! Good job Governor! Howard Simon is claiming it is a stereotypical move well it got that way for a reason! We all sit around a see people mooching off the government with food stamps, welfare, unemployment,etc. while wearing Baby Phat clothing and driving 40K brand new Dodge Magnums with rims and other modifications done to it. So let me get this straight....they can't afford food but they can buy a car that I would have to work my ass off for 5 years to pay for???? Everyone trying to get any type of government assistance needs to be drug tested. Period. Point. Blank. Once again, good job Governor! And SHUT UP Howard Simon.
Anon 11:16
Red herring?No way.I have lost count of how many times someone has asked me at work if they could buy liquor or cigarettes or blunt wraps with Independence Cards......so their kids are getting the shaft anyhow.
If I have to pass a drug test to work for a living then these people can certainly pass one to get free money.
12:56, sorry buddy, but the large scale data sets, as opposed to your small in-store sampling, just don't mesh with your hypothesis. All I'm saying is that it's going to be quite fascinating to see this experiment again in FL.
Joe, I hope (and I'm sure you will have one) we see an update in another year or 2 to see a) how many people were booted for drugs b) how much money the state saved by booting them c) how does this money saved compare to the money spent on the tests.
217-If drug tests are "good enough" for our military members, why not for our welfare recipients? Last time I checked, Joe Public is the one cutting the check.
2:17 PM
Your point is valid but misguided. The issue is NOT about saving money. Obviously this will cost more to implement than what is saved through denials. The real issue is increasing the probability that the money goes where it is supposed to, by making welfare recipients just as accountable as every other productive member of society.
3:55, I'm not against the priciple, but like so many things, when you dig into the details, you often find out the premise doesn't make since. i.e. yes we don't want people getting high on our dime but this presumes a large portion of recipients are actually sitting around getting high.
If I'm not mistaken, the numbers don't support this notion.
As for 4:02, it also doesn't make sense to spend more money going after the minority few abusing the system than it takes to let them slip through the cracks. Kinda defeats the purpose.
Rick Scott's companies will receive the contract to provide drug testing.
everybody needs to read the bill , the recipients have to pay for the testing before recieving the benefits and if the test dirty the are dropped for a year and after that year if they are dirty again they lose it for three years,and before you start crying about the children if parents test dirty the money for children is handled by a third party
If working people have to be drug tested then its good enough for the people on welfare as wwell !!
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