In an effort to drastically reduce the welfare rolls and make it more difficult for struggling families to receive government benefits, GOP governors and legislators have pushed mandatory drug testing laws. Not only do welfare recipients have to pass drug tests before they can collect benefits, they often have to pay for the test themselves, and will only be reimbursed by the state later if they pass.

Now House Republicans are considering making their vote to reauthorize unemployment insurance contingent on a mandatory drug testing requirement:

The bill by Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) would require unemployment claimants to pass a drug test if they are identified in an initial screening as having a high probability of drug use.

The proposal comes as Congress is mulling a reauthorization of federal jobless benefits for people out of work six months or longer. House Republicans have been drafting legislation, but the details have not been released. [...]

On Thursday morning, [spokesman for Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) Michael] Steel told HuffPost in an email he didn’t know whether the forthcoming unemployment legislation would include Kingston’s drug testing idea. A spokesman for the Republican leader of the House Ways and Means committee, which oversees unemployment insurance, could not confirm details of the bill.

Steel said on Wednesday that Republicans are looking to “reform” unemployment insurance before they will reauthorize benefits that are set to expire at the end of the year.

Despite their unwillingness to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires, Republicans have been reluctant to extend unemployment insurance and the payroll tax break that middle class families depend on more than ever. President Obama has noted that if Republicans vote no, middle class families will have to pay an additional $1,000 in taxes next year.

Republicans have willfully ignored evidence that drug testing requirements cost more money than they save and welfare recipients actually use drugs less than other groups.

Earlier this year a federal judge halted Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) mandatory drug testing policy on constitutional grounds. Only 2.5 percent of welfare applicants failed the test, which Huffington Post notes is “a far lower rate of illicit drug use than the national average of 8.7 percent.”

For months, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has been touting an illegal plan to unilaterally allow states to opt out of the Affordable Care Act if he is elected president. In an interview with the Washington Examiner’s editorial board, Romney was unable to provide any legal justification for this proposal, instead pitching the unanswerable question of the proposal’s legality to a questionable legal authority:

PHILIP KLEIN: You’ve said that on day one of your presidency, you would grant Obamacare waivers to all 50 states, as you pursue full repeal. But under the language of the health care law, waivers are subject to a number of restrictions, and wouldn’t apply until the year 2017. [...] [W]hat do your lawyers think as to why these waivers could take place, because I have the law here, and it says that it applies on January 1, 2017 – under the “waiver for state innovation.” [...]

ROMNEY: Then I’d have to have Ben Ginsberg, our lawyer, sit down. If you really want to go into that and tell you what — if that’s important to you, we’ll have Ben Ginsberg give you a call and talk about what provision of the law we would seek to employ.

Although it’s well known that Romney hired Ginsberg to advise his campaign on election law, Romney’s apparent admission that he is receiving general legal policy advice from Ben Ginsberg is troubling. Ginsberg is a GOP election lawyer who, among other things, was part of the team that convinced five Supreme Court justices to effectively name George W. Bush President of the United States in Bush v. Gore. In a 2006 Duke Law School speech explaining his role in that case, Ginsberg also made a surprising admission about what the GOP really thinks about voting rights and equality:

A quick note on perhaps the most interesting issue that came up [during Bush v. Gore] as we dealt with it, and that was Equal Protection . … Now, just like really with the Voting Rights Act, Republicans have some fundamental philosophical difficulties with the whole notion of Equal Protection.

Watch it:

Sadly, Ginsberg isn’t even the only Romney legal advisor to express “difficulties” with the notion of equality under the law. The co-chair of Romney’s “Justice Advisory Committee,” failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, once called the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters an act of “unsurpassed ugliness,” and also believes that the Constitution does not shield women from gender discrimination.

Earlier this week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry released a delusional campaign ad promising to end President Obama’s non-existent “war on religion.” Yet, when pressed to explain just how Obama is waging this imaginary war by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Perry was reduced to playing a weak game of guilt by association:

PERRY: We’ve got a federal judge, for instance, in San Antonio that said these kids can’t say an invocation at school. I mean, they say you can’t even use the word “invocation” at their commencement.

BLITZER: Is that President Obama’s war on religion?

PERRY: I’m just giving you some examples of what we’re seeing from the left, of which, I would suggest to you, President Obama is a member of the left and, uh, substantial left of center beliefs.

Watch it:

It’s difficult to count the problems with Perry’s statement, not the least of which is the fact that the “federal judge” Perry refers to was appointed in 1994 — 15 years before Barack Obama became president. Even if one disagrees with this judge’s understanding of the separation of church and state, it is impossible to see how the judge’s decision is Obama’s fault.

More importantly, Perry’s suggestion that Obama can be blamed for everything done by a “member of the left” would be comic if it were not so reminiscent of Joe McCarthy. Blaming Obama for the irrelevant action of a judge who has no tie whatsoever to Obama is no different from blaming Perry for a member of the right’s statement that “feminists,” “gays,” and “lesbians” caused 9/11.

Moreover, as Blitzer points out, Perry’s claim that Obama is engaged in some kind of war on faith is ludicrous on its face. Just a few days ago, President Obama said at the lighting of a national Christmas tree that Jesus “grew up to become a leader with a servant’s heart who taught us a message as simple as it is powerful — that we should love God, and love our neighbor as ourselves.

Earlier today, 53 percent of the Senate voted to move forward with Richard Cordray’s nomination to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — depriving him of the supermajority he needs in order to be confirmed. One of the senators joining this filibuster, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), was uncharacteristically candid about why he helped build this wall of obstruction — he simply wants to sabotage the agency:

I have met Mr. Cordray, and my decision to oppose his confirmation by the Senate has nothing to do with his qualifications. Rather, I feel it is my duty to oppose his confirmation as part of my opposition to the creation of CFPB itself. [...] Confirming any director for this bureau would be tantamount to agreeing that we need a uniquely powerful super-agency that is not even designed to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis. Until the CFPB is reformed, I will not support it in any way.

Simply put, this is nothing less than a direct assault on the rule of law. The CFPB was created by an Act of Congress and can only be repealed or modified by an Act of Congress. By his own admission, Lee’s filibuster is an attempt to make an end run around the Constitution’s legitimate lawmaking process.

But, of course, this filibuster is also just one more example of the Tea Party senator’s nihilistic approach to governance. Lee believes that federal child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution. He not only sponsored a radical constitutional amendment that would force the United States to adopt Tea Party fiscal policy forever, he then openly admitted that he was using last summer’s debt ceiling crisis to extort the rest of the Congress into passing his amendment.

Fortunately, President Obama does not need to allow Lee’s nihilism to shut down an essential check on Wall Street’s excesses. When the Senate adjourns for the year, Obama should immediately invoke the Roosevelt Precedent and recess appoint Cordary.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) attacked a proposal to switch to a national popular vote for presidential elections during a speech at the Heritage Foundation yesterday.

McConnell and six Republican secretaries of state discussed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV), a proposed plan for using a popular vote in presidential elections. The NPV would guarantee whichever candidate wins the popular vote would also win the electoral college – preventing a repeat of the 2000 election when Al Gore won the most votes but still lost the presidency. It would do so by getting states to agree to collectively award their electoral votes to the popular vote winner, but the compact would only kick in once states with a majority of the electoral college sign on. Currently, eight states and the District of Columbia have joined the NPV, comprising 132 of the needed 270 electoral votes for the compact to take effect.

Rather than embracing the NPV as a way to solidify the Constitution’s guarantee of “one man, one vote,” McConnell lambasted the plan, calling it a “genuine threat to our country.” Though McConnell admitted that the notion of a popular presidential vote where the candidate who receives the most votes wins is “appealing,” he called the idea “absurd and dangerous.”

MCCONNELL: Hosting this seminar on the most important issue [the National Popular Vote proposal] in America nobody’s talking about. Everybody’s following the debt crisis in Europe, the presidential election in America, unemployment statistics, but nobody is paying much attention to the genuine threat to our country. That’s what I want to address this morning.

Watch it:

This is not the first time McConnell has expressed unease with elections and popular votes. In July, the Republican Leader took to the Senate floor to declare that we must rewrite the Constitution and add in an amendment permanently entrenching a Tea Party policy agenda because “elections” haven’t “worked.”

Awarding the presidency to the candidate who receives the most votes is an eminently reasonable and democratic position. McConnell’s suggestion — that ensuring the person who gets the most votes becomes president is a “threat to our country” — is not.