Did you know you could spend your food stamps at the strip club?

I feel like outlawing the use of welfare funds at strip clubs and casinos was common sense, but apparently, like most things that are common sense, they have no place in government.

So, until this last week, when the House GOP presented a bill to restrict the use of LINK and other cards to their intended purpose, you could use your welfare funds in strip clubs and casinos. Which kind of makes me sad that I wasn’t on welfare at some point.

Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. (R-La.), the chief sponsor of the strip-club loophole bill, said in an interview that the legislation was a response to press reports that recipients of benefits under the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program were using state-issued debit cards containing the funds for gambling, alcohol and adult entertainment.

“It’s pretty rampant around the country,” Boustany said of the abuses. “This has really eroded the credibility of the TANF program in the eyes of the American taxpayer — a program that has been successful, by and large…

Boustany’s office cited reports of welfare abuses in eight states, totaling millions of dollars. His legislation would not reduce spending directly, but would restrict how taxpayer funds can be used.

In one well-publicized example, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2010 that California welfare recipients were able to withdraw cash from their state-issued debit cards at more than half of the casinos in the state.

There’s a bit of a conundrum here. Technically, taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for people on welfare to make it rain at their local booby bar, or keeping their local casinos in business. But at the same time, there’s an argument to be made that strip clubs and casinos keep people employed. They also may keep organized crime in business, but those people are employed, right?