The effort to cut off benefits to some welfare recipients caught using drugs raises questions about what happens to some innocent bystanders—their children.
The Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program provides aid to families between jobs…The House has advanced a bill requiring drug testing to TANF recipients and a cutoff of benefits to those caught using….The Senate is debating its own bill.
Sponsor Bill Stouffer of Napton says the remaining benefits can still reach remaining family members.
Farmington Senator Kevin Engler has his own suggestion for Engler about how the withdrawn benefits could be used. “I don’t’ have a problem taking this money and giving it to food banks,” he says. Stouffer says the bill allows the cash for children to be funneled through a third party, which would isolate the money from the drug-user in the family.
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The bill has broad support but has some critics question its cost.. One says the bill makes no provisions for payment to guardians of children if there are no family members to care for them when the drug-user’s benefits are cut off. In that case, he says, the state might not be saving any money by cutting benefits to drug-users; it might be spending more on the care of the children.
Several changes in the bill are expected to be offered.
