Welfare Reform - Research Paper Example

?Welfare Reform As the United s continues to reel from the after effects of the 2008 George W. Bush mishandling of our economy, our government finds itself in the unenviable position of having to find the balance between fiscal responsibility and caring for its citizens in need. For most of our jobless countrymen, welfare checks provide the means to continue to purchase life giving food as sustenance in their daily lives. However, the economic hardships that have befallen our local governments have forced its leaders to rethink and reform the local welfare laws in order to protect the neediest and deserving members of the state. This was done by multiple states in the guise of requiring all welfare participants to submit themselves to individual drug testing prior to their application for welfare. Although there have been some people caught as being positive for substance abuse in the past, this particular welfare reform has not been as successful as its implementing bodies hoped it would be. The failure of the drug testing law in relation to welfare privileges stem from the various complaints filed by different sectors of society against the law. These groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) claim that the local law revisions are a violation of basic human rights and must therefore be declared null and void by the state courts. This paper aims to look into the validity of the legality of the claims by the various human rights organizations in an effort to prove the ill effectiveness of this particular law in relation to welfare reform. In order to understand the controversy surrounding the drug testing amendment to the local welfare laws, we have to look back 20 years in time, to the year 1996 when the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was first implemented under the federal welfare reform law. According to the law those who wish to avail of the Family Independence Agency assistance need to provide urine samples in order to continue receiving government welfare (Watson, D. 1999). This move was vehemently opposed by the ACLU in the local Michigan courts as the group reasoned that the law is a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment. Kary Moss, the representative of ACLU Michigan at the time explained that (1999): The Fourth Amendment guarantees that no individual in this country can be subjected to a search by the government unless there is reasonable suspicion that they have committed some crime, Welfare recipients may be poor, but that's not a crime—not yet, anyway. The ACLU believes that by requiring mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients, those wishing to avail of the government aid will have been branded by society in a negative manner before they have even been proven to have committed any offenses. The law simply has too many loop holes, in the opinion of the group, for it to become actually effective in preventing the use of tax payer dollars by drug addicts who happen to be a member of our society. In Michigan, they believed that this law would have been an effective deterrent towards drug abuse even though (1999): ... evidence from a 1996 federal study showing that "the percentage of welfare recipients using, abusing, or dependent on alcohol or drugs [is] relatively small and consistent with the general U.S. population and those not receiving welfare benefits... Due to the existing inconsistencies in the law, its implementation, and questionable effectiveness in deterring welfare recipients from participating in illegal drug activities, the law was eventually halted and has not been implemented since. Let us be clear though that this law has not become as widespread in implementation as the government had first hoped. This is because the 1996 Welfare Reform Act did not make it a mandatory prerequisite to receiving government aid. The ACLU claims that (ACLU, 2008): Before the Michigan policy was halted, only 10% of recipients tested positive for illicit drugs. Only 3% tested positive for hard drugs, such as cocaine and amphetamines – rates that are in line with the drug use rates of the general population. Since the failure of the drug testing portion of the 1996 Welfare reform Act, there has been a steady decline in the interest of other members of the United States in implementing that particular portion of the law. As such, the law has actually been repealed in a number of U.S. states ever since. One of the states where the ACLU was able to get the federal courts to successfully block the law was in Florida even though; “Florida became the first state to pass and fully implement a bill mandating suspicionless drug testing of all applicants for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).” (Bloom R., 2012). The courts declared the law unconstitutional based partly on the fact that the welfare applicant, who already has tight financial resources as it is, otherwise he would not be applying for a federal welfare check, was being required to personally pay for the mandatory drug testing in order to prove that he qualified for the grant with the possibility of a reimbursement in the event of a negative result. The ACLU was able to prove their case in the Florida courts as the verifiable statistics pertaining to the ill effectiveness of the drug testing law came back to support their claims. Results showed that (2006): In the four months that Florida's law was in place, the state drug tested 4,086 TANF applicants. A mere 108 individuals tested positive. To put it another way, only 2.6 percent of applicants tested positive for illegal drugs — a rate more than three times lower than the 8.13 percent of all Floridians, age 12 and up, estimated by the federal government to use illegal drugs. This argument was a triumph for the Florida branch of the ACLU as they successfully showed that Gov. Rick Perry was wrong when he claimed that this law was “compassionate”. There is nothing compassionate about a law that would block those in the most need of financial assistance from receiving government aid. Rather, it is a death sentence for the innocent people who could be victims of mislabeled and mishandled testing procedures in the testing centers. The penalty for a positive drug test is a year- long ban on receiving any welfare benefits from the state (DePrang, E., 2012.). Although the constitutionality of this law continues to be questioned in state courts and its implementation remains contaminated by controversy, there have been a total of 25 states this year alone that have proceeded to implement the law. The most recent of which is the state of Georgia under the leadership of Gov. Nathan Deal (Bloom, R. 2012). Even though there is a large majority of the general public that supports the 1996 Welfare Reform Act mandating the implementation of drug testing on welfare recipients, it is important to note that they do so merely on the basis of the government campaign to gain support for the program. Since taxpayer dollars are at the center of the heated debate on the constitutionality of the law, the tendency of the general public is to support any move that will help their state save on tax dollar expenses. In the minds of the American public, the discussion does not have anything to do with the legalities and constitutionality of the issue. Rather, they look at the matter based upon the economic effect that the implementation of the program will have upon them. If it saves the state and local government money, then they are all for the law, regardless of the questions surrounding it. The public supports the unconstitutional law because they do not have a full understanding of drug addiction as an illness. Politicians like governors Perry and Deal managed to gain support for the implementation of the law because they got their supporters to believe that drug addiction is a problem of the society instead of a psychological illness. As long as the ACLU and similar organizations continue to fight the implementation of the unconstitutional law, there will always be a great chance that the people who rely on the TANF for the support of their families will be able to get access to the much needed help. It would be a lot more helpful for everyone concerned though, if the drug testing portion of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law were repealed by a constitutional move instead. In the meantime, state repeals of the law such as the one that happened in Colorado (Hoover, T. 2012), which happened when the law died in the Colorado house upon 2nd reading serves as a beacon of hope that the law just may be killed in the future. Sources Bloom, R. (2012, 18 April). “Just as we suspected: Florida saved nothing by drug testing welfare applicants” [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform-racial-justice/just-we-suspected-florida-saved-nothing-drug-testing-welfare DePrang, E. (2012, Nov. 15). “Rick Perry’s 'compassionate' sales pitch for drug-testing welfare recipients.” Observer. Retrieved from http://www.texasobserver.org/rick-perrys-compassionate-sales-pitch-for-drug-testing-welfare-recipients/ Hoover, T. (2012, Mar. 9). “Bill to drug test welfare recipients dies in Colorado house second reading.” denverpost.com. Retrieved from http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_20283105/drug-test-welfare-bill-dies-colorado-house-second N.A. (2008). “Drug testing of public assistance recipients as a condition of eligibility.” Safe Communities, Fair Sentences. Retrieved from http://www.aclu.org/drug-law- reform/drug-testing-public-assistance-recipients-condition-eligibility Watson, D. (1999). “Michigan begins random drug testing of welfare recipients”. World Socialist Website. Retrieved from http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1999/11/drug-n09.html Read More