Scott Walker’s Repellent, Unconstitutional Call to Drug-Test Welfare Recipients

Never trust a politician to do the
right thing. And by right thing, I mean not simply an action that
is morally defensible but one that is constitutional.

Hot Air’s Noah Rothman reports that Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.)
is proposing “to impose narcotics testing on prospective recipients
of food stamps and unemployment benefits.” Rothman points out that
Wisconsin is one of five states that tests applicants who have
felony drug convictions and, more important, that Walker’s blanket
proposal is almost certainly unconstitutional:

A 2003 case out of Michigan established that “suspicionless”
drug testing for prospective social welfare beneficiaries
represented a violation of their personal liberties. The 6th
Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in that case that drug testing
can be imposed on an applicant only if there is reasonable
suspicion of wrongdoing.

That’s how it should be. There’s no reason to treat food stamp
recipients or collectors of unemployment benefits (for which they
paid unemployment insurance) as moral defectives. You’d expect
Walker, who in 2012 hailed the rise of
a new class of “libertarian” governors to Reason, to grok
that.

There’s also a question of cost, too. Walker is supposed to be
tight with a penny, right? That’s part of his, er, charm.

Yet his sort of drug-testing is not only repellent on ethical
grounds, it’s a clear waste of money. If a recent program in
Missouri is any indication, Wisconsin will be collecting urine by
the bucketful to catch very few bad actors (and that assumes
smoking dope, say, should be a reason to pull somebody’s
benefits). Last year,
Missouri started testing suspected drug users (note:
suspected, meaning there was at least some hypothetical
reason to think a person was using drugs). The state ended up
spending $500,000 to test 636 people, of which 20 were found to be
using. So around 3 percent of suspects tested positive and each
test cost around $786. Before courts ruled Florida’s drug-testing
regime illegal, the Sunshine State spent $115,000 on piss tests and
ended up coughing up $600,000 in reimbursements to applicants who
had been denied benefits.

So why might Walker be doing it? Rothman supplies
a disturbing answer:

The answer seems clear. These reforms are rather popular with
base Republican voters, and the institutions which would oppose
Walker’s reform are not. This is a pretty clear indication that
Walker is interested in translating his successes in Wisconsin into
the Republican presidential nomination.

And Republicans wonder why Americans have a
negative view of the party? Something like 72 percent of Americans

disapprove of the GOP and
just 23 percent of millennials identify as Republican. If
calling for drug tests of welfare recipients and out of work people
is “a clear indication” that you’re running for president, who can
blame us?