Liberals and conservatives disagree on how to solve problems, and sometimes about whether there even is a problem. In a Tuesday piece, Slate’s Jamelle Bouie argued that right-wingers appear both hallucinatory and misguided when they respond to “fake problems” with “real -- and harmful -- policy.”
Bouie identified three supposedly overstated issues (drug testing for public-assistance recipients, voter fraud, and regulation of abortion providers) that have given conservatives “excuses” to propose measures that would advance “the most draconian parts of the Republican agenda.”
From Bouie’s piece (emphasis added):
Wisconsin governor [Scott Walker] wants to drug-test people applying for food stamps and unemployment insurance…[I]t’s a single line from a campaign document, detailing Walker’s agenda for a second term...
Across the country, drug tests for public benefits are standard fare for Republican politicians...
The problem, however, is that this isn’t a problem.
The vast majority of people on public assistance aren’t drug users and aren’t addicted to any illegal substances. In one study, only 3.6 percent of recipients satisfied the screening criteria for drug abuse and dependence. In another, among people who received food stamps, the rate was similarly low…
Welfare drug tests waste money and add new stigma to public assistance. Still, Republicans push and support them, a bad “solution” to an imaginary problem.
To be clear, this isn’t an instance of good ideas and bad ideas, where a problem exists, and lawmakers have done a poor job of fixing it. No, with their drug tests, Walker and other Republicans have launched an assault on a problem—drug-addled welfare users—that doesn’t exist. But this isn’t the first time Republicans have attacked a fake problem with real—and harmful—policy.
Take voter fraud. A rallying cry for Republicans, the specter of fraudulent voting has justified a whole host of strict identification laws…
…[L]awmakers in 19 states have passed a bevy of restrictive voting measures, including photo ID requirements and an end to same-day registration…
Again, this was unnecessary. We don’t need to fight voter fraud because it doesn’t exist, or at least, it doesn’t exist at a scale that requires drastic action. Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, tracked every instance of voter fraud from 2000 to present. He found 31 incidents out of one billion ballots cast. Put another way, you’re more likely to see a UFO or get killed by lightning than you are to witness in-person voter fraud—the kind supposedly “prevented” by voter ID laws…
Then there is the fake problem of bad abortion clinic design…Examples include hospital-admitting privileges for clinics that perform first trimester abortions—which have minimal risk of major complications—and onerous building requirements that have little to do with safety; in 2013, Virginia required clinics performing first trimester abortions to expand their parking lots.
…[T]ens of millions of Americans oppose abortion, and it’s clear these laws are meant to reduce its availability…
…[T]he GOP might be fighting fake problems, but they provide real excuses for the most draconian parts of the Republican agenda.
