Texas Congressman: Drug Test The Unemployed

Texas Congressman Blake Farenthold recently told a town hall meeting audience in Brownsville, Texas that people who are unemployed and on other public benefits should probably be drug tested, because it’s too easy to just collect your check instead of working. When we have a national unemployment rate of 8.8%, Farenthold says, “Until things get bad enough, there’s no incentive to change…I think drug testing is not an unreasonable requirement.”

I think this is strange on many levels. First, aren’t Republicans supposed to be anti-government? How is having the government have access to your bodily fluids on a regular basis anti-government? It seems more pro-big government to me.

Secondly, and most importantly, we are in the largest economic downturn in a generation, so the fact that there are millions of people unemployed in this country has nothing to do with them being good-for-nothing drug addicts or drunks! In Farenthold’s own state there are many people who are unemployed — how many are drug addicts?

To insinuate so much is not only insulting, but illustrative of the ignorance of this man — was he ever laid off and forced to go on unemployment? I was, and I’ll tell you what, I was so busy looking for a job and worrying about my future, that even if I had money to drug and booze it up all day, I simply wasn’t in the mood to get wasted. See the video for yourself:

We asked Farenthold press spokesman Margarita Vargas to explain the congressman’s remarks and said said, “He did not call people who are unemployed ‘drug addicts,’ that statement is blatantly false.  He does support drug testing for people who receive certain social benefits over an extended period of time,”

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD