States Adding Drug Test as Hurdle for Welfare

           America is in a bad economic state right now and we need to take precautions to make sure that our money is going towards people that really need it and not to people who spend it on illegal drugs. A supporter of this new idea that the government should drug test people that collect aid says, “Working people today work very hard to make ends meet, and it just doesn’t seem fair to them that their tax dollars go to support illegal things", and as someone who has money taken out every week from my paycheck I want my money to be spent wisely. At times America was naive to think that no one collecting money used it to buy illegal drugs, but as the budget got tighter the government needed to make sure that the taxpayers money was not being wasted. The largest debate was, "Money has also been an issue — the sides dispute whether the savings in unpaid benefits will eclipse the spending on administration, including the cost of testing." and that is a valid point. The government should look into the annual cost of testing to see if it will actually cut down on costs or just add on to the growing deficit.
     Writer, A.G. Sulzberger, is a very informative writer that presents both sides of the story. He wrote this article to inform Americans that their money would not be given to drug addicts in this recession. Many say that this new bill is stereotyping low-income families, but they should not take offense to this if they have nothing to hide. Sulzberger uses many facts, numbers, statistics, and dates to inform his readers. Towards the end of the article, Sulzberger points out that not everyone admits to recent drug use on forms that they fill out for the government so we could never get an accurate account of how much money the government would save. Sulzberger does not know if the bill will pass in Congress, but for right now it is just a heated debate.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/us/states-adding-drug-test-as-hurdle-for-welfare.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&src=un&feedurl=http://json8.nytimes.com/pages/national/index.jsonp