Getting Tough on Kids in Wheelchairs
Getting Tough on Kids in Wheelchairs It is a sign of how depraved things have gotten in Washington that Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress are whipping up resentment against people with...
...Families need SSI to pay for things like wheelchairs and extra medical and transportation costs not covered by Medicaid...
...Before that law, states had been shirking their responsibilities so that about a million disabled kids were receiving no education at all, let alone a segregated, inferior one...
...House Majority Leader Dick Armey has called the ADA a "disaster" and has vowed to lead a move to have it "revisited" and rewritten...
...But to hear some teachers and lobbyists moan about it, you'd think it was the major reason our schools are so violent and financially strapped...
...The political power of the disability community has so far proved pretty effective in the face of this backlash...
...The proposed cuts of $270 billion and $180 billion in future Medicare and Medicaid spending are a cause of deep worry...
...I lived in a subsidized apartment when I first got out on my own...
...That often leaves nowhere to turn but Medicare...
...This law, now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), has been without question the most important catalyst in the enormous social progress people with disabilities have made over the last twenty years...
...Insurance companies are exempt from the ban on discrimination embodied in the Americans with Disabilities Act, so they deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions that threaten profits...
...Housing is under attack in a House appropriations bill that would eliminate all new, low-income rental-assistance funds...
...they won't be able to afford these aids on their own...
...To qualify for SSI, a child's family must meet a strict standard of poverty...
...This would accomplish AFT's goal of making it easy for schools to disregard kids who are too expensive or too difficult to serve: that's the same attitude that made IDEA necessary in the first place...
...The Senate approved cuts in September that are less severe but will still mean mass purging...
...That's why people with disabilities make up about 15 percent of those receiving this assistance...
...Kids with disabilities are also the targets of the crusade to cut Social Security...
...This type of HUD housing has been essential in providing the transitional link to independence from nursing homes and other oppressive institutions for disabled people on fixed incomes who cannot immediately afford market rent...
...Long before there was an Americans with Disabilities Act, there was Public Law 94-142, passed in 1975, which made it clear that states were to provide a "free and appropriate" public education to all disabled kids...
...But there's no time to relax...
...Getting Tough on Kids in Wheelchairs It is a sign of how depraved things have gotten in Washington that Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress are whipping up resentment against people with disabilities in general and kids with disabilities in particular...
...Adults with disabilities are in the cross hairs, too...
...The House voted in March to cut off SSI payments to 200,000 disabled children— about 30 percent of current recipients...
...They want to get America straightened out by getting tough with those damn demanding kids in wheelchairs...
...Fellow Texas Republicans Bill Archer, chair of the Ways and Means Committee, and Tom DeLay, the majority whip, along with Armey are among only twenty-eight members of Congress who voted against the ADA...
...Those who have to rely on Medicaid must virtually bankrupt themselves to qualify for the program, and many do...
...Mike Ervin (Mike Ervin is a disabled activist and freelance writer in Chicago, and a frequent contributor to The Progressive...
...Because Congress is due to reauthorize IDEA this fall, the AFT and five other groups are lobbying for an amendment that would allow school districts to kick out any disabled kid who is disruptive in any way...
...The ADA and IDEA were exempted from unfunded-mandates legislation...
...The American Federation of Teachers ran one of those pseudo-op-ed advertisements in The New York Times that told the "typical story" of a special-ed kid in a mainstream classroom who would "scream, throw furniture," and eat paste...
Vol. 59 • November 1995 • No. 11
