Two of the Republican Party’s recent losers want to blame women and children for their losses, apparently. Rick Perry and his boy Dewhurst have hit rock bottom and now want to require drug testing for beneficiaries of need-based benefits (welfare, TANF).
Senate Bill 11 would require applicants to the Texas Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to undergo a drug test. If applicants fail the test, they would not be eligible to apply again for a full year, unless they attended a substance abuse treatment program. The bill was written by state Sen.Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, and several other Republican lawmakers.
I guess they missed the whole loaves and fishes part of the Bible.
“Adding insult to injury,” Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said in a press release, “is that Perry would pay for the drug testing out of the very TANF funds that should go to provide assistance to people. In other words, he’s taking about $350,000 worth food and assistance from all families from the general TANF grant just to try to find a few violators. This is simply callous and perverse.”
Dewhurst says businesses test their employees, as part of his defense. As much as I disagree with businesses who do that, people in need are not employees and the State of Texas would be a failed and boarded up business by now. Defend all you want, this is just wrong and lacks any humanity the Republicans may have had left.
Filed under: Republinutiness, Texas Lege
