Time to load up on Visine spray? The Salt Lake Tribune reports (via Reason):
People seeking unemployment benefits or welfare would have to first pass a drug test under a proposal Sen. Orrin Hatch will try to add to legislation extending the social safety net during this time of economic turmoil.
Hatch, R-Utah, said his idea would help battle drug addiction and could reduce the nation’s debt. He will try to get the Senate to include his amendment to a $140 billion bill extending tax breaks and social programs this week.
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Yes because drug tests are free.
Wait! We need any kind of stimulus we can get. If this is the way to shove another $150bn into the economy, then let's do it. Sure, I'd rather have bridges that don't crumble like triscuits and a wave of rooftop solar installations, and, sure, I suppose that even poor people have the right to a certain amount of basic human dignity, but, come on, medical testing is a high-quality job sector.
Eh – we'll just contract it out to China. They work cheaper than deadbeat, lazy Americans.
Denying America's poor slobs $140 bn worth of Hobo Bean (TM) and cardboard box housing is GOP-speak for 'doin' God's werk.' The drug tests are just to help them target their marketing campaigns…
I guess the Mormon Inc. Drug Testing Company LLC is looking for a government handout.
Nothing reforms an impoverished drug addict like cutting off public assistance. Fortunately guns will available to them; guns make the robberies a lot easier to carry out
Can we drug test lazy members of congress. I mean they can actually afford a drug habit.
All members of Congress should be drug tested (since they are on the public dole) and required to pass the INS citizenship exam.
And at $25 a urine test, that would come to how many billions per year? Hey, why not get a hair test at $150 each so we can see if there's a history of recent (90 days or so) of use. Is someone in the drug testing industry stroking this guy's balls to get him to want that or is he just fucking stupid?
Gotta be ball-stroking. Nobody's that stupid.
Orrin doesn't believe in the FDA or government generally regulating anything normally, so yeah – I'm guessing there's some Mormon-owned drug lab in SLC that stands to make a lot of money off this.
Oh, I know, he's gonna charge people to do a drug test, at a markup. That's how the debt goes down! He's a genius.
Impoverished drug addicts could be flogged on pay-per-view as a condition of receiving their benefits. Profit.
Make members of Congress get drug tests AND VD tests, once a week or so!
I just want them to take IQ tests.
In fact, the overwhelming majority of drug users are lawfully employed – how else could they support their habit? There can only be so many dealers, hookers, thieves, etc. – so that the tests, in order to be effective, should be extended to the working population as well. And also to students, housewives, the handicapped, etc. Let's go!
What the hell, let's all go pee in a cup today!
And then dump it on Orrin Hatch.
You KNOW he would like that way too much!
Even after the welfare "reform" of the 90s, America still treats its poor and unemployed far too much like actual human beings with dignity; it's good to see Hatch working to make sure we can humiliate them further.
FEMA camps really are the answer to all of our problems. Do we build separate camps for the poor or do we just mix them in with the Messicans? Wait – the teabaggers hate the idea of FEMA camps. So confused now!
At last! A politician who is ready to listen to the Facebook "likes" of people I haven't seen since elementary school but friended anyway, but later came to regret it.
Great idea…and while we're at it can we come up with a test to see which GOPers are closeted self-haters?
What? Why not?
These drug test and extended tax breaks are all about job creation. Using the tax cuts, new wealth creators will be forming small businesses that test the deadbeat welfare queens, billing the government about triple what it would cost to do the tests itself. To increase the profit margin, the labs will be located in Bangalore. It's what makes us such an economic powerhouse; they'll be calling Hatch "Reaganesque."
And when the Somalis hijack the container vessel with all those urine samples, won't they be PISSED!
I'll support this law as soon as Hatch guarantees a job equivalent to the one lost to everyone who tests negative. Otherwise it's based on a profoundly flawed assumption.
Orrin Hatch and the rest of us would be well served by reading Dr. Gabor Mate's "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts". Why do these sadists get off on abusing the weak who have no voice? We should be testing Generals and Defense contractors for ego-mania and delusional thinking before funding their budgets.
Wait! Could this be extended to those who use the broadcast airwaves under license from WE THE PEOPLE? So, like, say, if you were using the radio to broadcast bombast, deception and bigotry, you'd like have too be tested to prove no ingestion of oxy? Or, if you wanted to televise your belief that Woodrow Wilson > Hitler > Obama, you would be tested as to whether you ever ingested coke? Let's get some clarification before we hate on this idea just because it was advanced by a practicing fraud.
This could actually turn the teabaggers against Hatch, assuming the rule covers white welfare and unemployment recipients and the drugs tested for include crystal meth.
Trouble is the fat TP types are generally hooked on the borderline legal shit like oxy and zanax – see Limpballs. Plus they aren't collecting unemployment per se but disability for the "back pain" they are using to get the scripts and the hoveraround scooters. So Orrin's probably in the clear.
One would assume that the teabaggers would recoil at the thought of the government intrusion into their lives. "What business is it of theirs what I put in my body????? The Founding Fathers would be rolling over in their graves!"
Then they would read the Internets for ways to defeat their upcoming corporate-mandated drug test.
Hey, IT jobs don't grow on trees.
Thank goodness drinking myself into a stupor is perfectly legal and won't disqualify me from collecting unemployment!
Yeah! And you can spend it all on lottery tickets!
Can I still huff spraypaint before my test?
He'll have to get that past Emperor DeMint.
Instead of a specimen cup I want to pee in Orrin's mouth. The magical underpants give him special drug-testing powers, right?
He would like THAT waaaaay too much, too!
Poor Orrin, uncrowned Queen of the Pussyfarts, the quintessential person who steps out of the shower to take a leak.
Will the boards of bailed-out banks be held to the same standard? Or does the whiz quiz only apply to those making less than six figures?
But what if drugs are the only way to make the shame of being on welfare bearable? Oh right, the unemployed are generally too lazy to be embarrassed about collecting those sweet sweet welfare checks.
Let's face it, Orrin Hatch just wants lots and lots of bottles of urine.
Hell, lets test for alcohol and caffeine while we're at it – just so we can get accustomed to it before the Mormons take over the government.
The rationale behind testing is that a drug free workplace is safer. Welfare recipients and the unemployed are, by definition, without a workplace. This must be a safety initiative for Walmart customers and the food bank.
We'll need to see how the Doritos and Twinkie lobby weighs in on this one.
It's spreading:
"I'm gonna push to make sure that if someone fails a drug test in this state, that we are not gonna pay benefits," [Nikki] Haley said at a press conference outside the S.C Department of Employment and Workforce. "That's something I'm gonna push for, I think people of this state deserve that. Personal responsibility matters and we're gonna continue to fight that fight."
By legalizing drugs we could tax them and regulate them. Bachelor of Science degrees in drug-distribution would then be legitimate programs offered around the country. ITT Tech could teach meth-manufacturing.
Orrin Hatch: Another Mormon on Drugs.
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