GA law and Gov. Deal are wrong

This is based on reporting by Arthur Delaney on Huffington Post.

Last week, Gov. Nathan Deal singed into law a requirement that welfare applicants pay for and pass a drug test in order to be eligible for benefits.   Deal's office released a statement saying that Florida's experience with a similar law reduced its welfare applicant pool by 48% and saved the state $1.8 million.

Not so, according to this article.  Deal based his assertion on bad research by a conservative think tank in Florida, the Foundation for Government Accountability.

In fact, this assertion is contradicted by the state government's own evaluation of its law.  And it is simply not true.    The law took effect in July 2011, and in October a judge suspended the law with an injunction.  During that time 4,086 applicants were drug tested.   Only 2.6% tested positive, most for marijuana.  This compares to the general population where over 8% test positive for drugs.

So, that's the first point.   Welfare applicants tested positive at less the 1/3 the rate of the general population.

Further, from a report by the Florida Department of Children and Families:

"Florida's caseload had been declining consistently since December 2010. . . .  On applying the previous rate of decline to a projection of the July-September 2011 caseload and factoring in the drug testing denials, we found that the projected caseload would have been lower than the actual caseload. Therefore we saw no dampening effect on the caseload for the one quarter (July-September) covered for this report."

Let me just emphasize this point.   Assuming the pre-existing rate of declining applications continued during the three month period when drug tests were required, there would have been even fewer applicants than there actually were.

That's the second point:  there's no truth at all in saying that the drug test reduced the number of applicants by 48%.  In fact, it was the opposite -- if it had any effect at all.

So now Georgia has this worse-than-useless law on its books, which will require poor people to pay for a drug test they can't afford so they can get welfare assistance they really need.

And it's all based on lies.   Gov. Deal either doesn't know it or doesn't care.  It just sounds like red meat to the "blame the poor" crowd, and that's apparently what counts.

Ralph