Arkansas’s Governor Asa Hutchinson is in a dilemma. He and his legislature are bananas crazy, passing hate laws while also threatening to end one of Arkansas’s only successful moves over the past couple of years: expanding Medicaid. A little while back, Arkansas Republicans pushed through the concept of a pilot drug-testing program for welfare recipients. You know the programs that cost taxpayers money while failing to find people on drugs or helping people on drugs? Same idea! But even in extremely conservative areas like Arkansas, there are still Democrats who will ask pertinent questions like: All of the evidence shows that these drug-testing policies are terrible and not effective, why should we do that here? That’s why the program that Republicans put forth was a “pilot” program.
As originally filed, the legislation called for creation of a two-year pilot program in counties that border any state with drug screening or testing for TANF recipients, but after concerns were raised that targeting only some areas might be unconstitutional, legislators added a line stating, “The pilot program shall include the population statewide as determined by the Department (of Workforce Services).”
Officials said last week that drug screening and testing will be implemented statewide in a matter of days.
[Wait, what?]
According to Think Progress, who spoke with Democratic Representative Greg Leding, this is a surprising turn of events.
Greg Leding, a Democratic representative in Arkansas’s House, didn’t like the idea of his state creating a pilot project to drug test some welfare applicants in certain towns to begin with. So when the legislation was up for a vote last year, he voted against it. But he didn’t even realize that a provision inserted at the last minute would give his governor the power to unilaterally expand that project to the entire state.
In fact he didn’t realize it until last week, when Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) announced his intent to do just that. “As far as I know, I don’t know that any legislators were made aware of the decision until news broke early last week,” he told ThinkProgress. “You would think the governor’s office would have at least some kind of conversation with the legislature to let them know that this was the plan, rather than finding out through the press.”
[My emphasis]
That’s some dark, dubious magic performed by the Republican Party in Arkansas. The concept of the pilot program was to test it out. That’s exactly what a pilot program is. You test something and then you have some empirical information with which to make a decision concerning whether or not you want to move forward on the thing you were testing. Unless of course you have zero interest in allowing people to know where you come up with facts or if you don’t actually care whether or not your program performs the way you claim it will.
Other strange information has been released by the governor’s administration. When it announced its intent to expand the program statewide, it estimated doing so would cost about $1.5 million while capturing just $40,000 in savings from people who lose their benefits. But a week later, it revised the cost estimate to just $100,000.
When asked how it was able to reduce the estimate, an official at the state Department of Workforce Services told ThinkProgress, “TANF program administrators have since come back and through a series of brainstorming sessions come up with cost-effective methods to implement the various aspects of the legislation.” Those include lowering administrative costs through using existing staff, not using an off-the-shelf drug testing product, using current information technology systems, and “drug testing costs lowered by revising initial assumptions.”
[My emphasis]
“Through a series of brainstorming sessions come up with cost-effective methods...” is what the sound of bullllllllllllllllllsssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiittttttttttttttt sounds like. But in the end, Republican legislators don’t really give a hoot about how much money it costs to make poor people feel badly, as long as their constituency feels justifiably superior to the poorer, frequently less whiter, people being humiliated.
Sen. Blake Johnson, R-Corning, who sponsored the legislation, said that between 3,000 and 4,000 Arkansans are receiving TANF benefits. He said the drug tests cost just under $70, so it would cost about $245,000 to test everyone in the program, and considerably less to test only those who raise suspicions during the screening.
Typically, fewer than 5 percent are tested in states that have a screening process, Johnson said.
Johnson was asked if he believed the program would be a good use of state money if, say, 11 people tested positive for illegal drugs.
“Absolutely. If it helps those (people) recover, it’s a minimal cost,” he said.
Sen. Blake Johnson is a tea party politician, holding up Medicaid expansion while figuring out a way not to hold it up—he’s classy in a full-of-shit kind of way.