EDITORIAL: When Democrats Vote Like The Republicans They Unseated
ANN ARBOR OFFICIALS who serve in Lansing recently voted on reform bills that require those who apply for welfare and unemployment benefits to be tested for illegal drug use. Those who test positive for illegal drug use would be denied their benefits. Those already receiving benefits would lose them. Representatives Jeff Irwin and Adam Zemke, as well as Senator Rebekah Warren each voted against the Republican-sponsored reforms. Representative Gretchen Driskell, former mayor of Saline, and who represents the 52nd District, voted in favor of both bills.
The enactment of such bills in other states has been hampered as of late by legal challenges and the expense of running the programs, which have generally uncovered relatively few drug users.
These bills represent political low-hanging fruit and are used as a strategy to deny public aid. Such rhetoric is easy to sell: drug use is illegal, and people who indulge in illegal drug use should not do so with public money. Michigan will save public aid money, and those who break the law will get their just desserts. It’s legislative theater that appeals to our Midwestern thriftiness and our collective Puritanism.
However, these laws haven’t saved money, and drug testing of welfare recipients in Florida was halted by a federal judge. The rollout of a drug-testing program in Georgia was suspended as a result of the Florida ruling. Measures in other states, such as Michigan, have been narrowed in scope, because Politicians want to avoid lengthy court battles.
Ann Arbor residents donated to Democrat Gretchen Driskell in her 2012 race against Republican Mark Ouimet. The Michigan Democratic Party Fund poured $465,000 dollars into Driskell’s campaign, and she raised more money than the Republican Speaker of the State House, Jase Bolger. Driskell, a single mother of three children, ran as a champion of equality/women’s issues and was endorsed by several groups that advocate on behalf of women’s rights and progressive politics.
Representative Driskell’s support of these “reform” bills should make those Democrats who supported her, and those progressive organizations that endorsed her candidacy, think long and hard before doing so again. While Democratic Mayor of Saline Ms. Driskell, donated to Republican Rick Snyder’s gubernatorial campaign. Democrats were convinced to send Gretchen Driskell to Lansing because she promised to vote differently than the Republican whom replaced. She failed do so on these two key votes.
Targeting the state’s unemployed and poor for drug testing that federal judges have found amounts to illegal search, is not only wrong-headed and regressive political policy, it is socioeconomic discrimination. These two “reform” bills supported by Representative Driskell attempt to pin the societal problems of hunger and joblessness on individuals.
Michigan is by no means the first state to pass laws that seek to strip unemployment and welfare benefits from individuals who use illegal drugs. This means our legislators had ample opportunity to investigate the results of similar laws in other states, including the number of individuals impacted and the actual savings. If Representative Driskell had done this, she would have seen ample evidence that shows the cost of implementing such programs is far costlier than the savings.
The Tampa Tribune reported in 2011 on the savings associated with catching the 2 percent of Florida’s welfare benefit recipients who’d tested positive for illegal drug use: “Over 12 months, the money saved on all rejected applicants would add up to $40,800 to $60,000 for a program that state analysts have predicted will cost $178 million this fiscal year.”
Representative Driskell was not the only Democrat in Lansing who supported the two bills. Be that as it may, Washtenaw County voters should expect our representatives to pay attention to outcomes in other states that implement similar programs, and federal case law that impacts the bills that come before them. Had Representative Driskell done that, she would have learned such programs uncovered relatively few drug users, cost more to implement and administer than they save and have been struck down in federal court.
If Michigan’s “reforms” were really about rooting out the use of public money to purchase illegal drugs, all of our state’s civil service employees, including our legislators in Lansing, some 51,000 individuals, should be tested. Teachers in Michigan’s public schools would be tested, 175,000 people. Local government employees and elected officials would be tested, as well, another 124,000 individuals. Michigan’s university and community college faculty, all 61,000 of them, should be required to test negative for illegal drug use or risk loss of their jobs.
Targeting the 75,000 people in Michigan who receive unemployment benefits and the 1.3 million who receive welfare for drug testing is the height of hypocrisy. There are 700,000 Michigan residents working in public sector jobs, including Representative Gretchen Driskell. This legislative “reform” is not about rooting out abuse of public money. It is about a Republican agenda in Lansing that focuses on protecting the wealthy and penalizing the poor. We’re disappointed it has Rep. Driskell’s support.
