Welfare Reform Reform
From the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal comes this article on the recent success of welfare reform and the efforts of our esteemed Senior Senator to undo its effects and send us back to the days of "the Great Society policy of government handouts" with no interest whatsoever in breaking "the cycle of dependency that 40 years of open-ended social welfare policies and perverse incentives had created."
There used to a time in this country when honest, hard-working people would actually be ashamed to be collecting welfare from the State. Now, it's just another part of many people's normal financial planning strategy. The level of opposition to welfare reform astounds me.
In Michigan last year, the courts struck down attempts to require welfare recipients to submit to mandatory drug testing. As expected the ACLU was all over this like flies on pig shit, saying it violated the privacy rights of poor people. Too freakin' bad! If you're gonna take money from the state that you're not actually working for, the state should have every right to determine if you are going to spend it on food and clothing for your children or a bag of heroin.
I submitted to a blood and urine test in order to obtain a life insurance policy. My insurance carrier had every right to insist that I do so. It's their money, and they need to know if I'm a risk for health problems further down the road. With welfare recipients, this should be even more clear. It's not a private organization putting up the cash, it's every hard-working citizen paying taxes to the government who's footing the bill here.
Drug testing, in my opinion, should just be the tip of the iceberg here. Test for nicotine by-product as well, I say. If you got cigarette money, you got food money. What you don't have is common sense and the ability to make the right decisions for your family's well-being. Maybe the withholding or reduction of your monthly handout might help you see the light.
Mandatory reversible (get off welfare, have a baby) contraception, along the lines of Norplant, or whatever the latest methods are, for all female welfare recipients of child-bearing age. If you can't scrape up enough cash for a sandwich, what business do you have bringing babies into the world, knowing full well you can't afford to feed and clothe them? What's that? Contraception violates your religious beliefs? Too bad. Paying for food for your kids while you sit around smoking butts watching Springer violates mine. If vasectomies were easily reversed, I'd be tying off all the deadbeats knocking these women up too.
There used to a time in this country when honest, hard-working people would actually be ashamed to be collecting welfare from the State. Now, it's just another part of many people's normal financial planning strategy. The level of opposition to welfare reform astounds me.
In Michigan last year, the courts struck down attempts to require welfare recipients to submit to mandatory drug testing. As expected the ACLU was all over this like flies on pig shit, saying it violated the privacy rights of poor people. Too freakin' bad! If you're gonna take money from the state that you're not actually working for, the state should have every right to determine if you are going to spend it on food and clothing for your children or a bag of heroin.
I submitted to a blood and urine test in order to obtain a life insurance policy. My insurance carrier had every right to insist that I do so. It's their money, and they need to know if I'm a risk for health problems further down the road. With welfare recipients, this should be even more clear. It's not a private organization putting up the cash, it's every hard-working citizen paying taxes to the government who's footing the bill here.
Drug testing, in my opinion, should just be the tip of the iceberg here. Test for nicotine by-product as well, I say. If you got cigarette money, you got food money. What you don't have is common sense and the ability to make the right decisions for your family's well-being. Maybe the withholding or reduction of your monthly handout might help you see the light.
Mandatory reversible (get off welfare, have a baby) contraception, along the lines of Norplant, or whatever the latest methods are, for all female welfare recipients of child-bearing age. If you can't scrape up enough cash for a sandwich, what business do you have bringing babies into the world, knowing full well you can't afford to feed and clothe them? What's that? Contraception violates your religious beliefs? Too bad. Paying for food for your kids while you sit around smoking butts watching Springer violates mine. If vasectomies were easily reversed, I'd be tying off all the deadbeats knocking these women up too.
