A flurry of Lansing proposals involving welfare benefits fuel debate about whether backers are waging "a war on poverty or a war on the impoverished," as Gary Heinlein puts it in The Detroit News.
The Legislature's Republican majority has redoubled its efforts to squeeze welfare spending by imposing new conditions on aid recipients.
Lawmakers want to field-test a drug screening program next year for welfare recipients, cut off cash aid to families whose children miss too much school and require recipients who won more than $600 in the Michigan Lottery during the past decade to reimburse the state up to half of their winnings.
A new Senate bill would deny public payments to cover child care for families whose assets are worth more than a yet-unspecified amount.
Backers say their goals are to protect taxpayers and help aid recipients become self-sufficient. But Gilda Jacobs, head of the Michigan League for Public Policy, warnes against "instituting policies that harm lots of people because the Legislature wants to get at a few bad apples," according to Heinlein.
