On the recordJune 19, 2013
I guess I would rebut several of the arguments the gentleman has made. First of all, you know, common sense really ain't that common, and this amendment is an example of that. First of all, it uses very fallacious arguments that presume that most of the people who use food stamps also use drugs. I would just remind the body that 46 percent of the people who use food stamps are hungry children. And as the author of this amendment has suggested--quite incorrectly--this is not about hungry children, it is; because if that person in the household who is the applicant is denied food stamps, hungry children will be affected. This is unconstitutional. This has been through court. It violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution against illegal searches and seizures. It costs a lot of public money just to humiliate people. They found in Florida, for example, that people who don't use public assistance programs are three times more likely to be drug users; and nationwide, they have found that recipients don't use drugs at any greater rate than the general population. This is a slippery slope in violating one of the basic tenets of our Constitution. Mandatory drug testing laws are not based on individualized suspicion, and the Supreme Court has held that it doesn't pass the constitutional measure. It will cost $75 for one of these drug tests, and for what purpose? Just to criminalize and humiliate poor people. So with that, I would reserve the balance of my time.
