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GOP Legislating Against Myths They Created

Remember Sharron Angle? She ran against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for his senate seat. In addition to being famous for vowing “Second Amendment remedies” if the Tea Party didn’t win the 2010 election, she is also the lady who ran on the idea that unemployment benefits make people lazy and let them refuse to look for work. Angle never read the rules – if you don’t actively look for work, you don’t get unemployment benefits in many states. And of course, everyone in the right wing knows that people who receive any kind of government subsidy or benefits are drug addicts.

Florida governor Rick Scott used the “welfare recipients are drug addicts” argument to get a law passed that requires welfare recipients to be drug tested in order to get their benefits. Okay, it’s not all welfare recipients. As far as I know, they are not testing children yet, though technically it’s the children who are getting the benefits. If one doesn’t have children, one cannot receive welfare. The results are in for Scott’s “welfare drug testing” program. Less than 4% of welfare recipients tested positive. That’s half the rate of the rest of the state’s population. And, because the law says that the state will reimburse the cost of those tests for anyone who tests negative, the testing program is costing Florida millions instead of saving them millions.

Well, the program worked so well in Florida that Republicans in Congress want to expand it nationwide. The new program would require the unemployed to pass drug tests to receive their benefits. Officially, the idea was inspired by business owners who complained to their Republican Congressmen about their inability to find enough drug-free applicants for their job openings.

Republican Representative Jack Kingston of coastal Georgia explained when he presented the drug testing bill that “I had an employer tell me of an overwhelming response for job openings. There was just one problem. Half the people who applied could not even pass a drug test.” Well, what’s the problem? That means that half did pass it, so he must have had enough applicants to fill the jobs. And how did the “employer” know which applicants were receiving unemployment insurance? Last time I looked, a job application asks if you are currently employed. It doesn’t ask if you are receiving unemployment.

When South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley made the same allegation, it was proven that the “employer” didn’t exist. She’s pulled the story out of a bodily orifice. Kingston’s office refused to identify this phantom employer so the press could verify his story.

Kingston’s bill would have added failure to pass a drug test to the existing list of reasons for denying unemployment benefits. These include on-the-job misconduct (being fired “for cause” which is the reason employees have to sign incident reports every time they break a rule), committing fraud and earning too much money from part-time work. Instead of putting forward Kingston’s bill, the GOP leadership has chosen another way to do this.

As part of a bill that would reauthorize the payroll tax cut and continue a portion of the existing unemployment insurance benefits, there would be a provisions allowing states to require drug testing if they chose to and would reduce the maximum Federal benefit from 73 weeks to 33 weeks. States would be authorized to cut benefits even more if they chose to.

The bill also calls for speeding up construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, an extremely controversial pipeline that would carry oil from northern Canada to the Gulf Coast. Friday night I was listening to a Republican legislator repeating the lie that the pipeline would create 10,000 jobs. The truth is less than 2,000 permanent jobs and only around 3,500 temporary jobs for the construction. Host Erin Burnett had not done her homework before conducting the interview, so she did not challenge the lie.

This is just one more way that the Republicans are demonizing the poor, the unemployed and those who receive assistance of any kind. It is a necessity for the GOP to blame the poor for being poor, blame the underemployed and unemployed for being underemployed and unemployed so their base doesn’t figure out that someone else is to blame. They also blame unions for our economic crisis, which justifies their anti-union legislation.

So, in the spirit of cutting costs and reining in the deficit which wasn’t a problem when they were tripling the national debt for Dubya’s wars, they want to cut unemployment benefits and try to cut people off welfare and unemployment with drug testing. They have also forced cuts in the home heating assistance program.

In 2008, home heating received $5.1 billion in grants. The deficit cutting drive has forced that figure down to somewhere between $3.4 billion and $3.6 billion. Last year, the figure was $4.7 billion. Bowing to Congressional pressure, President Obama had only asked for $2.5 billion this year. The money that has been made available so far to the states has only allowed home heating assistance equal to less than last year’s figure, while the price has risen. For New England, which is more dependent upon home heating oil than other regions, the impact is catastrophic. A single heating oil assistance check of $685 isn’t going to go far against an anticipated season’s bill of $3,000 for a senior citizen living on a fixed income on just over $900 a month. $900 a month sound like a lot? Yeah, until you start doing the math – rent, electricity, phone, the co-pays and deductibles on medical bills and prescriptions, food. $685 won’t even fill the average home oil tank. A small one runs 200 gallons. At close to $4 a gallon, that’s $800 for a single fill-up. Most companies require a minimum 100 gallon delivery.

Around a decade ago, Karl Rove promised the Republicans a “permanent majority” in the House and Senate and permanent occupancy in the White House. In any other country, that would be called “one-party rule” and we would call the country totalitarian. To achieve that goal, just this year, GOP-dominated state legislatures have redistricted Democrats out of their seats and passed laws that put unnecessary barriers to full participation in the election, mostly aimed at restricting the poor, minorities, students and the elderly. In Wisconsin, they redistricted Democrats out of Congress and imposed new voter restriction laws including photo ID. Then, they closed DMV offices in low-income neighborhoods, making it nearly impossible for the “undesirable” to get that photo ID. The GOP’s explanation for reversing decades of strides in increasing voter access and participation – a completely dis-proven insistence that there is wide-spread voter fraud.

Now, between proposed cuts in unemployment benefits, heating oil assistance, Medicaid and Medicare and attempting to eliminate people from welfare and unemployment with drug testing, they are taking the process one step further. Choose between heating oil and medications that sustain your life. Choose between heat and food. Choose between rent and electricity. Homelessness, starvation, freezing to death, dying for want of medications and medical attention, not being able to summon help in an emergency…..great ways to limit the opposition’s access to the polls.

When you can’t win elections on your merits, cheat. And when that won’t be enough, reduce the numbers in the opposition.

Related articles

• House Republicans May Mandate Drug Testing As Condition Of Continuing Unemployment Benefits (thinkprogress.org)
• House GOP Unemployment Benefits Bill Includes Provision Allowing Mandatory Drug Tests (thinkprogress.org)
• GOP Jobs Bill Allows States To Drug-Test Unemployed (huffingtonpost.com)
• House GOP Introduces Payroll Tax Cut Bill (time.com)
• You: Florida law results in more denials of unemployment benefits (latimes.com)
• Jack Kingston: Drug Test The Jobless (huffingtonpost.com)