Pass/fail: Lawmakers want drug testing for welfare recipients, but opponents call it unfair

Without welfare, Jamie Todd doesn't think she'd make it.

Food stamps keep her tiny kitchen stocked. WIC provides her baby's formula. The Missouri Child Care Assistance Program pays for day care. Medicaid foots the doctor bills.

And the $234 monthly cash benefit from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, means there's money for rent, cab fare and diapers for 10-month-old Brianna.

"I have no income right now," said the 20-year-old Cape Girardeau nursing student. "I'm going to school. I'm raising my daughter. If it wasn't for these programs, I don't know what we'd do. There's no way we'd be able to survive."

But Todd says drugs aren't a part of her life.

So she isn't worried about a controversial move in the Missouri Legislature, and in several other states, that would require suspicion-based drug testing for certain welfare recipients.

"I'd pee in a cup in a heartbeat because I know I don't have anything to hide," she said. "I can see how some women would be scared off by drug testing, but I feel like some people should have to be tested. It might motivate them to get off drugs."

Many state lawmakers agree.

The Missouri House of Representatives last week approved a bill 116-27 that would allow testing of the state's 112,000 TANF recipients, about 522 of whom live in Cape Girardeau County. Now, several other bills have been introduced in the state Senate, including one by Sen. Jason Crowell, R-Cape Girardeau.

The proposal has sparked a heated debate among social workers, lawmakers, child advocates and others about the bill's social implications, cost and effectiveness.

The law would require the Department of Social Services to develop an estimated $2 million program to screen and test TANF recipients who the department has "reasonable cause" to suspect of using illegal drugs. A recipient who tests positive is entitled to an administrative hearing, after which the recipient could lose TANF benefits for at least a year.

Area lawmakers are overwhelmingly in favor of the measure, however. Rep. Wayne Wallingford, R-Cape Girardeau, voted for the bill in the House, which calls for a loss of benefits for one year, while Crowell's Senate bill calls for a three-year loss of benefits.

Wallingford has heard from his constituents about the issue and said everyone supports it.

"I haven't talked to a single person not in politics that thinks it's a bad idea," he said. "We want to support people suffering from drug addiction, but we don't want to support their habit."

While similar measures have failed in the Senate the past few years, Crowell and others say the bill has legs this year. Crowell is hopeful the law will make it to the desk of Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat.

The legislature, through this bill, is sending a message of "tough love" to drug abusers on the welfare rolls, Crowell said.

"If we continue to give them money, we're not helping them, we're enabling them," Crowell said.

While opponents argue the law would hurt children, Crowell said that is not true, noting that the law would not affect Medicaid and food stamps. He also says the testing is not random, which should make it safe from being deemed unconstitutional by the courts.

"If someone walks into an office and looks high or engages in erratic behavior, then a case worker has cause to ask the individual to submit to a drug test," Crowell said. "If they test positive, they can lose their benefits. My constituents tell me the average taxpayer should not be subsidizing drug use, and I agree."

Others argue it's not so cut and dried.

Opponents of the bill say it unfairly targets poor people and drug testing welfare recipients would be costly, ineffective and would hurt families.

In her role as director of Southeast Missouri Network Against Sexual Violence, Tammy Gwaltney sees mothers who live in poverty almost every day. She questions whether the proposal begins with the stereotype that people who live below the poverty line are more prone to be drug abusers.

"The data tells us that the TANF population isn't any more prone to use drugs than the general population is," she said. "And the majority of this money is intended to help out the children. Why financially punish a child for someone else's struggles?"

Gwaltney also pointed to a recent study that looks at the effectiveness of drug testing of TANF recipients. The report, conducted by CLASP, a national not-for-profit advocacy organization for low-income families with children, concludes that research finds little evidence that drug use is prevalent among TANF recipients.

The report says drug testing is expensive and inefficient and is even costlier to administer accurate results. The tests do not differentiate between drug use and drug abuse and sanctions put vulnerable children and treatment at risk, the study says. Gwaltney also said the bill does not provide any mechanism or funding for treatment.

"I question the necessity of it," Gwaltney said.

Walt Paquin, an assistant professor of social work at Southeast Missouri State University, has other questions. He'd like to know why other groups that benefit from taxpayer dollars don't take drug tests, such as college students who use federally subsidized loans, business owners who get economic development tax credits or state employees?

"It seems to me we're targeting these people because of their economic situation," he said. "I'm against it. I think it would create more problems than it solves. This bill doesn't even look at the root causes about why people are using drugs."

Some within the social work field are less sure about the proposal, though.

Dana Branson also deals with single mothers who struggle with drug and alcohol addictions at her job as assistant program director at Cape Girardeau's Family Counseling Center. At any given time, about 32 women live at the center, which offers rehabilitation services, and treats as many as 70 in its outpatient program. All of the women are considered indigent.

Branson said she understands, as a taxpayer, the need for spending public money wisely. She also knows there is a "great deal of abuse" of the welfare system. She also recognizes that the government, crushed by debt at the national and state levels, has to do something to rein in spending.

"Anybody who has ever had a checkbook should understand that," she said.

But as someone who works in the field of addiction, Branson said, she knows addiction knows no priority.

"If they could say to themselves, 'Just stop doing this,' I wouldn't have a job," she said. "If this was a simple problem with a simple answer, we would have solved it years ago."

Branson said she understands why others are conflicted.

"It's like a big spiderweb," she said. "It's difficult to have one opinion on such a complicated issue."

smoyers@semissourian.com

388-3642

By the numbers

County Families receiving TANF/month Cash benefits in 2010

Cape Girardeau 522 $1.37 million

Bollinger 100 $283,212

Perry 114 $302,484

Scott 616 $1.58 million

SOURCE: Missouri Department of Social Services