Michele Bachman Returns!

This is from the Huffington Post.

The House and Senate both approved a payroll tax cut bill on Friday that would extend unemployment benefits through 2012.
But according to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the extension is hardly the bill's crowning achievement.
"They're extending unemployment, too, but the big thing that we get is no longer can a welfare recipient walk into a strip club and get money out of an ATM machine to pay for a lap dance," she told conservative radio host Mark Levin on Thursday night. "Now, I'm not making this up. That's the big thing that we get out of this bill."
According to the bill, welfare recipients won't be able to use government-issued debit cards to get cash through ATM's at strip clubs, casinos or liquor stores. The ban is similar to one included in a House bill proposed earlier this month by Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.).
Questioned by Levin whether this use of welfare funds was a major problem, Bachmann replied, "Welfare recipients across the country, Mark, have been using their welfare cards -- they look like credit cards, it's a debit card. They get these debit cards, they can walk into a casino, they can walk into a liquor store, they can walk into a strip club and if there's an ATM machine in there, they can use their welfare card, draw down the money and use it to pay for gambling, lap dances."
Bachmann, who is running for a fourth term after dropping out of the GOP presidential race, called the issue "unbelievable."

"People need to be outraged by this, because we are literally going into hock and reducing our standard of living to keep this kind of ridiculous spending up," she said. "That's a problem."

Well, Ms. Bachman is right about one thing. This is unbelievable.

There are more than three hundred million  people in this country. There isn't a thing we could imagine that hasn't happened or doesn't happen, at least on occasion. The question is, does Ms. Bachman, or anyone else, have any evidence that people are using welfare debit cards at casinos, liquor stores or strip clubs on anything other than a very rare basis? And does this use, if it's less than endemic, invalidate the program of welfare for millions of people who are struggling, many many of them with children?

Furthermore, isn't locking ATM's in these locations rather silly? First of all, what mechanism allows the machine to differentiate between a relief debit card and any other? Second, and even sillier, if a person cannot use a welfare debit card in any of these places, there's nothing to keep a minimally determined person from using an ATM next door or across the street from any of them. The ban seems to me to be totally impractical.

But I guess it's good fodder for Ms. Bachman as she seeks re-election. Personally, I  hope  she gets retired this November.