One of the downsides of Gov. Scott Walker’s presidential ambitions is that we now have to suffer through his cheap publicity stunts to try to attract the attention of really nasty Republican primary voters.
Such is Walker’s phony proposal to deny health care, food stamps and unemployment benefits to anyone in need who fails a drug test.
That’s not going to happen since it’s against the law. Federal rules for those programs prohibit states from refusing to feed or provide a minimal means of survival to poor people for failing drug tests and Walker knows that.
It’s just another “Look at me!” moment for Walker to show Republican extremists everywhere just how “bold” he is about trying to deny government benefits to the poor.
Walker’s proposal really is just a waste of time at a time when Wisconsin’s government should be reducing unemployment, expanding health care and feeding more needy families instead of looking for ways to make the lives of the poor more miserable.
Almost accidentally hidden inside Walker’s mean-spirited proposal, there’s actually the germ of a good idea. That’s how we can tell Walker is not really serious about what he’s proposing. Because Walker’s accidental good idea would cost the state money and improve people’s lives.
The excellent idea would be to provide drug treatment on demand for poor people who need it. That’s an idea decent people all over the state, including liberals and moderates who aren’t nearly foolish enough to support Walker for president, would be able to get behind.
We already have treatment on demand for people with money in this state. The drug or alcohol problems of children or parents in families of means are treated as health issues, which they are.
The family pulls out its insurance card and receives drug treatment at Hazelden, Betty Ford or some local care center. Enlightened employers even provide time off for treatment as they would for any other health problem.
Drug addiction among the poor, on the other hand, is treated as a crime. That’s what has led to mass incarceration of drug-addicted African Americans, Latinos and other poor people, overwhelmingly for nonviolent drug crimes.
And in prison it’s always easier to get drugs than to get drug treatment. Many are treated briefly before their release, which does little to prepare them to remain drug-free on the outside.
If Walker were really serious about providing free drug treatment for poor people eligible for public benefits, he would make Wisconsin a national leader in restoring the lives of citizens with drug addictions to make them successful, contributing members of the community.
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Walker Causes Unemployment, Not Drugs
But, clearly, Walker is not really serious about helping poor people with drug problems.
If he were, the last thing Walker would want to do would be to deny health insurance to someone testing positive for drugs. He’d want poor people to have access to all the expanded health care they could possibly get.
Who knows? Maybe Walker would even accept the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds he’s turned down to expand Medicaid for poor people that would be paid 100% by the federal government.
And whatever type of treatment poor people would need to go through to cure their addictions, they also would have to eat. Denying them food stamps doesn’t make any sense at all.
Unemployment benefits are a completely separate issue that has little to do with drug use. Millions of people successfully working in every existing type of job use drugs in their private lives.
That’s not why people are unemployed in Wisconsin. Some are unemployed because four years ago Walker closed a $3 billion budget gap by forcing layoffs and wage cuts for public employees at every level of government.
They’re unemployed because Wisconsin’s economic recovery under Walker is much slower than in the majority of other states following the second-worst economic crisis in U.S. history.
People who’ve worked all their lives and never expected to be unemployed now find themselves applying for meager unemployment benefits so their families can survive. And Walker is trying to invent new excuses to refuse to help them.
But if Walker can’t deny benefits to people in need because it’s illegal, what does he get out of it? Well, like a serial killer says on Bruce Springsteen’s stark Nebraska album: “I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.”
There are a lot of vicious people around who are attracted to politicians who publicly beat up on poor people and many of them vote in Republican primaries.
Such a cruel ploy is much harder to reconcile with Walker’s brazen public claims that God is somehow guiding his political career.
The Jesus all the rest of us learned about in Sunday school wanted Christians to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. He never said anything about drug testing them first.
