Double-standard making the poor prove they’re worthy of government benefits

So for the 12-15 states that require drug testing of welfare recipients, do they also require drug testing for anyone on the government payroll? Farmers on subsidies, politicians, researchers, any company that's received a government loan, and so on? What happens if a politician tests positive? Should they lose their job? Hmm, then they might have to go on welfare, where they get screened again. Then what? Do they lose their benefits and starve?

Is this really what we've come to? Doesn't seem very Christ-like to me...

The double-standard of making the poor prove they’re worthy of government benefits
By Emily Badger
April 7, 2015

Poverty looks pretty great if you're not living in it. The government gives you free money to spend on steak and lobster, on tattoos and spa days, on — why not? — cruise vacations and psychic visits.

Enough serious-minded people seem to think this is what the poor actually buy with their meager aid that we've now seen a raft of bills and proposed state laws to nudge them away from so much excess.

But the logic behind the proposals is problematic in at least three, really big ways.

The first is economic: There's virtually no evidence that the poor actually spend their money this way.
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The second issue with these laws is a moral one: We rarely make similar demands of other recipients of government aid. We don't drug-test farmers who receive agriculture subsidies (lest they think about plowing while high!). We don't require Pell Grant recipients to prove that they're pursuing a degree that will get them a real job one day (sorry, no poetry!). We don't require wealthy families who cash in on the home mortgage interest deduction to prove that they don't use their homes as brothels (because surely someone out there does this). The strings that we attach to government aid are attached uniquely for the poor.

That leads us to the third problem, which is a political one. Many, many Americans who do receive these other kinds of government benefits — farm subsidies, student loans, mortgage tax breaks — don't recognize that, like the poor, they get something from government, too.

When I first heard about this, my initial reaction, and the one that remains is, why is it that the party that proclaims to want smaller government has a representative who is pushing for increased bureaucracy? Why are they, who want government to stay out of people's personal lives, dictating what they can spend their meager money on?

If someone is on food stamps and blows it all on one filet mignon, they're going to learn when they go hungry the rest of the week. Nevermind that there's no evidence to support the idea that welfare recipients have spending habits such as this.

It boggles the mind. Were we always this judgmental as a species, or have we turned into bigger hypocritical assholes recently?
The rush to humiliate the poor
By Dana Milbank Opinion writer
April 7

Rick Brattin, a young Republican state representative in Missouri, has come up with an innovative new way to humiliate the poor in his state. Call it the surf-and-turf law .

Brattin has introduced House Bill 813 , making it illegal for food-stamp recipients to use their benefits “to purchase cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood, or steak.”