AUGUSTA, Maine — One of the early measures rushed through the U.S. House of Representatives this year would allow states to require drug tests to receive unemployment compensation, a move that the LePage administration supports even though it has no plans to start testing anytime soon.
“We need flexibility,” said Julie Rabinowitz, director of policy, operations and communication for Maine’s Department of Labor.
The House last week approved a bill on a near party-line vote to toss out a federal regulation that set testing limits that effectively blocked states from doing any drug tests for Unemployment Compensation recipients except in narrow job categories where drug tests are mandatory, such as flying an airplane. The measure faces an uncertain fate in the U.S. Senate.
U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin joined his GOP colleagues on the vote because, he said, “drug testing for welfare programs should be a state’s decision, not controlled by the whims of Washington.”
Unemployment benefits are administered by the Department of Labor, and they are generally not considered “welfare” because eligibility is based on money paid into a trust by employers.
Poliquin wrote on Facebook that “in the last few days of the previous administration, bureaucrats in Washington moved to restrict a state’s ability to institute drug testing for certain government programs.”
He said he thinks states such as Maine should have the right “to institute drug testing if they deem it necessary for these programs. If a state believes that welfare reform will help strengthen the system and ensure benefits go to those who truly need them then Washington should not get in the way.”
U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, D-Illinois, said the problem is that the proposal “is not about helping those with drug problems get treatment. It is about cutting benefits.”
Rabinowitz said several states are eager to begin drug tests for people on unemployment, particularly Texas and Wisconsin, but Maine is in no hurry.
But she said there is a good reason to consider it because the legalization of recreational marijuana may have an impact down the road.
She said people who are on unemployment are required to look for work and to take jobs that are offered. But what happens, she asked, if a company that wants to hire a forklift operator, for example, offers someone a position and then does its own drug test and won’t hire someone with a positive result?
In a case like that, Maine would still be paying unemployment for someone who could be working if they hadn’t been using drugs, even legal ones, she said.
Rabinowitz said that if the Labor Department saw a trend that unemployed workers were losing out on jobs because of failed drug tests, it might want to begin requiring drug test to keep recipients from using drugs that prevent them from getting hired later.
In any case, she said, it’s better to preserve the ability of states to take action if they see a need.
U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, told the House that he worked to ensure a 2012 jobs bill included a provision that would let states do drug screenings and tests for unemployment applicants “seeking a job or an occupation that regularly required new employees to pass a drug test.”
He said he thought the change “would have a meaningful impact on the lives of many Americans struggling with drug use” and would help people “confront and overcome” the challenges that drug use can create.
But U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Massachusetts, said that while Congress should do more to help people struggling with addiction, the GOP bill “has nothing to do with fighting drug abuse.”
“It is about allowing states to put one more time-consuming, humiliating obstacle in the way of Americans who work hard and were laid off from their jobs and need unemployment insurance to pay the bills while they look for new jobs,” he said on the House floor.
“There is no evidence that unemployed workers have higher rates of drug abuse than the general population. In fact, logic suggests that rates of serious drug abuse are lower,” Neal said because those who qualify for unemployment benefits were recently employed and not fired for cause.
Neal said that states eyeing drug tests “may be trying to limit the number of workers who collect unemployment insurance when they are laid off as a way to reduce pressure on underfunded unemployment trust funds,” which are essentially insolvent in a majority of states.
Maine’s other member of Congress, Democrat Chellie Pingree, opposed the House bill.