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Catherine Rampell writes today in the Washington Post about Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's proposal is his state budget announcement that would require applicants for welfare, Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment benefits be tested for illegal drugs. Walker knows that policies such as this are a dog whistle to conservative primary voters, and he is burnishing his image for the 2016 Presidential race. For her part, Ms. Rampell points out that such testing programs in the other states that have implemented them have not uncovered wide-spread drug use, and that the cost of administering these programs is usually far greater than the savings the states realized by not granting benefits to the undeserving.

Rampell has alternatives of her own, namely to drug-test those segments of the population that benefit from the public largess, especially on the Federal level. Testing Medicare and Social Scurity beneficiaries, she asserts, would "save the country some major dough." Ultimately, members of any group receiving government funds should face drug-screening. Where the real money is, she states, is in tax expenditures, the carve-outs in the tax code Congress likes to give to particular groups and industries. If you take tax deductions for items such mortgage interest, health insurance, carried-interest. etc., you should be ready to provide a urine sample.

Of course, I think Rampell stops short of a full-throated demand that anyone receiving the People's money should be drug-free. We should be testing everyone receiving a government check, especially paychecks. Test members of Congress, test bureaucrats, test the President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Could there be a better spectacle than a line of House members queuing up for the Capital rest rooms with a little plastic jar in hand?

Here in Southwest Florida, we have learned from experience. Last year, Rep. Trey Radel (Ft. Myers, Naples) resigned after pleading guilty to cocaine possession in Washington D.C. Ironically, as a Congressman, Radel voted for a bill intended to prod states into drug-testing food stamp recipients.