In another attempt to blame workers for our weak economy that was triggered by massive abuses and fraud on Wall Street, Republicans in Congress are now trying to tie unemployment benefits to drug testing.
During a debate on the floor of the House of Representatives this week, Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) suggested the unemployed can’t find jobs because of their own bad decisions.
“I have been back in my district, and we do town halls all the time,” Reed said. “And what I’ve heard from small business owners across our district is that one of the main reasons that they cannot hire individuals is because they simply cannot pass a drug test.”
This year more than ever, Republicans have brought up again and again the topic of unemployed people using drugs. Lawmakers in a dozen state legislatures pursued jobless drug testing bills in 2011, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, in an unprecedented flurry of legislative activity on the issue. But a major obstacle to those proposals is that federal law does not allow states to deny unemployment benefits for reasons not related to the circumstances of a person’s unemployment — though 20 states do have laws disqualifying workers from receiving benefits if they’re fired for a drug-related reason.
The legislation percolating through the states culminated in Congress, where Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a bill on Tuesday to allow states to do all the drug testing they want. NASWA director Rich Hobbie, who’s worked in the unemployment insurance field since 1975, said it’s the first time a bill to drug test the unemployed has made it so far. The fate of the provision is currently in the hands of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who has said he finds it ridiculous.
The War on Drugs has been an abject failure, but these idiots want to expand it. How pathetic.
Drug testing in the workplace makes sense where safety is an issue. Other than that it’s an invasion of privacy. These people call themselves conservatives, but they just want to impose their own version of the nanny state.
