August 5, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 139 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session

[Pages S4920-S4921]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT

  Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, I am speaking tonight on behalf of the 
millions of Americans living with disabilities, and on behalf of the 
many more who, whether they know it or not, are just 1 day, one 
accident, one devastating medical diagnosis away from acquiring a 
disability as well.
  I come to the floor on their behalf because I came to the floor by 
rolling through the Capitol's corridors in the wheelchair you see me 
sitting on now, and I could come to the floor because 30 years ago, 
Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, granting millions 
of Americans like me better access to the full, independent lives we 
deserve.
  That landmark legislation only passed because of the dedicated 
activists who proudly crowded in front of this building in 1990 to 
demand that their country finally give those with disabilities the 
basic rights the Constitution provided.
  It only became law because dozens of them got out of their 
wheelchairs, set down their crutches, and crawled up the 83 steps of 
the Capitol Building--because Jennifer Keelan, an 8-year-old with 
cerebral palsy, pulled herself to the top of the steps, saying, ``I'll 
take all night if I have to,'' and because those around her refused to 
leave a fellow American behind, offering Jennifer support when she 
needed it, one step, one shoulder to lean on at a time.
  Thirty years ago, these activists changed Senators' hearts, minds, 
and, most importantly, votes. Thirty years ago, this legislative body 
said that people like me mattered. But last week, Republicans in this 
Chamber proposed a bill that said we don't.
  I speak out of a sense of frustration as I watch my Republican 
colleagues, including the ones who once championed the ADA, attempt to 
reconstruct, brick by brick, the shameful wall of exclusion that 
Congress sought to tear down three decades ago.
  Less than a week after celebrating the 30th anniversary of a 
Republican President declaring that the ADA would bring us ``closer to 
that day when no Americans will ever again be deprived of their basic 
guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,'' Senate 
Republicans have put forward legislation that threatens to deprive our 
community of those same fundamental rights.
  Many interpreted the timing of the HEALS Act as confirmation of an 
alarming fact: The GOP has declared war on the disability community and 
the ADA. I truly hope this is not the case and that the timing was a 
deeply unfortunate coincidence, but at the end of the day, actions 
speak far louder than words.
  If Senate Republicans want to demonstrate that they value life, that 
they value the civil rights of all Americans, they must join Democrats 
in supporting two measures that would show the disability community 
that their party actually gives a darn about them.
  First, we need to save lives by preventing mass institutionalization. 
Placing individuals with disabilities into congregate care facilities 
where the risks of serious illness or death are high is reckless and 
unacceptable. To achieve this goal, we must increase the Federal 
Medicaid Assistance Percentages, the FMAP, by 10 percent for Medicaid 
Home and Community-Based Services.
  Republicans and Democratic Governors alike desperately need this 
change. The House already passed this 10 percent FMAP increase months 
ago, and the Senate must follow suit in any COVID-19 relief deal that 
is reached.
  Real-world experience has tragically demonstrated how vulnerable 
congregate care settings are to deadly superspreader events like COVID-
19. We know from existing data that Americans with intellectual and 
developmental disabilities are killed at far higher rates than other 
Americans when infected with COVID-19. So investing in State efforts to 
provide Medicaid services to vulnerable populations in the safety of 
their own homes is just a commonsense policy that would save countless 
lives.
  Second, Senate Republicans must abandon efforts to gut the ADA, once 
and for all. Disability rights are human rights, and these civil rights 
must never become optional benefits that can be taken away whenever it 
is convenient or cheaper for employers or those who are in power. 
Allowing businesses to exclude employees with disabilities from 
reopening plans is exactly the type of discrimination that the ADA 
sought to abolish. Yet the GOP HEALS Act seeks to relegate millions of 
Americans back to second-class status, sending the offensive message 
that our community can be cast aside if the cost to companies are too 
high.
  But the harsh reality is that these efforts are anything but new. 
Decades ago, when my friend Judy Heumann passed her exams to earn a 
teaching license, she was nevertheless denied the license by the school 
board all because of so-called concerns about legal liability in the 
workplace
  They said that because Judy used a wheelchair, she represented a fire 
hazard and could not safely teach in a classroom. Do these types of 
concerns sound familiar? The passage of the ADA was supposed to 
relegate such workplace discrimination stories to the history books. 
Those outrageous examples of injustice were supposed to represent the 
nightmares of yesterday, not the reality of tomorrow made possible by a 
Republican proposal today.
  Yet here we are in 2020, and Senate Republicans are shamelessly using 
a deadly pandemic as cover to gut the ADA and hoist that brick wall of 
exclusion right back up. No one is asking for special treatment. What 
we are asking for is to not take away the basic rights the Constitution 
promised all those centuries ago and this Chamber affirmed three 
decades ago under a Republican President.
  So as we debate this next relief package, the questions that every 
Member of this body must ask are simple: Are we going to leave 
Americans with disabilities behind? Are their lives worth saving? Are 
their jobs expendable?
  For anyone with a conscience--for anyone with any ounce of compassion 
or even just a lick of respect for the rule of law, the answer to those 
questions should be obvious.
  You know, in the Army our Soldier's Creed included never leaving a 
fallen comrade behind. I am alive today because my buddies in Iraq 
risked their lives to recover my body because they thought I was dead 
and refused to leave me behind.
  The activists who crawled their way up the Capitol steps did much the 
same for each other: helping one another make their way up inch by 
inch, closer to the Chamber I am sitting in right now, refusing to let 
any one of them struggle--to let any one of them fall behind.
  I am on the floor tonight because of those two acts of courage from 
two different groups of people continents away and a decade and a half 
apart.
  Now, as a Senator, my North Star is paying that debt of honor forward 
and trying to live up to the sacrifices they made for others. So today 
and tomorrow and the tomorrow after that, you better believe I am going 
to keep fighting to hold the Senate accountable for living up to the 
motto of the Nation we serve: ``E Pluribus Unum,'' Out of Many, One, 
because this country was born on that idea. It was born from the phrase 
``We the People.'' And it grew out of the belief that there is nothing 
more powerful than the will of the citizenry when the citizenry works 
with each other and for each other.
  Our response to this pandemic is a test of our faith in that Founding 
doctrine. If we focus on the ``we''--if we think about uniting the many 
into the one--then we can save lives and move past this national trauma 
together. But it is up to each one of us to act in a way that protects 
all of us, to act in a way that ensures no one, nobody, disabled or 
otherwise, will be left behind.

[[Page S4921]]

  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.

                          ____________________