The G.O.P.’s campaign promise to deny welfare benefits to convicted drugdealers will go unfulfilled this year. A bill giving judges authority todeny welfare benefits when sentencing a drug dealer failed to make it past alegislative deadline and is dead for the year.Other bills which failed to meet today’s deadline include a measure whichwould have let electric and gas utilities compete for customers; a proposalto make it illegal for an authority figure to have sex with a 16 or 17 yearold as well as a bill which sought to increase penalties for those whotorture animals.
