Lost your job? We'll need a specimen

APPARENTLY, the mere thought of issuing unemployment checks to the nation's jobless now acts as a diuretic for many of our elected leaders.

Well, I suppose it's more of a diuretic by proxy. The politicians themselves don't feel the urge to go, but they would very much like people who don't have jobs to fill a lab cup on command.

We last saw this phenomenon about a year ago. Lawmakers around the country suddenly began offering a stream of bills to require recipients of unemployment or welfare payments to undergo periodic drug tests.

My favorite plan was offered up by a state senator who represents my old home district in Florida. He wanted one of every 10 people filing for unemployment benefits - even workers recently laid off - to provide a urine sample before they could collect a check. And, best of all, he wanted them to cover the $30 cost of the tests.

Now, there's some logic behind this desire to ensure recipients of unemployment and welfare checks are clean and sober. Certainly, none of us likes the idea of people using tax dollars to roll a doobie or cut snortable lines of cocaine. It's inconsiderate, to say the least.

But the timing of these test proposals is rather odd.

The latest politician dispensing cups is Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who recently added drug tests to a bill to extend unemployment benefits for folks who've been out of work for more than 26 weeks. He says people who fail the screening will be sent for treatment.

But America has never been known for its generosity in funding drug treatment programs. As a matter of public policy, we prefer addicts to pull themselves up by their bootstraps - no matter how many swings and misses it may take before they find their bootstraps. The sudden interest in getting people into treatment rings a bit hollow.

And why mandate tests now, during the worst recession in decades? Isn't it "punitive and petty" - as Rep. Barbara Mikulksi, D-Md., puts it - to demand tests for people who've been laid off, as if substance abuse had something to do with their troubles? And isn't it a bit redundant and wasteful to require tests? Nowadays, folks who are lucky enough to find a job are likely to have to undergo a test as a condition of employment.

Sen. Hatch, one of many small-government advocates worried about the cost of extending the unemployment aid and running up the federal deficit, doesn't see anything contradictory in proposing new expenditures for tests and counseling. Hatch contends the program will pay for itself. But, as The Washington Post's Ezra Klein notes, "How many urine samples can a small government process?"

Potentially, there would be 15 million little cups, if everyone receiving unemployment insurance or welfare had to take the tests.

With this proposal, there's also a disturbing undercurrent of rhetoric that implies the unemployed are to blame for being jobless for so long.

Consider Sharron Angle, the tea partier who won the GOP nomination to run against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada this fall. (Are these two really the best the state has to offer?) Angle told a TV station back home that "you can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job, but it doesn't pay as much.... We really have spoiled our citizenry."

Spoiled? That's news to Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., not to mention a long line of unemployed Americans.

"You've got millions of people out of work, and the idea is that they all have a clever scheme that they're going to live high off the hog on unemployment. People are losing their houses because of unemployment," Miller recently told The Hill newspaper. "So you think what? That this is a good thing? 'Unemployment check, I'm losing my house, this is cool'?"

Fortunately, there are folks in both parties who seriously doubt the jobless are gaming the system.

"Listen," Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) told The Hill, "with the state of the economy and the absence of jobs, I don't think that there's this huge pool of people out there that says, 'Oh boy, now I [don't have to look] for a job for another few weeks.' I think that's cynical."

Yeah, a wee bit.

Daryl Lease is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. E-mail: daryl.lease@pilotonline.com.