The ABLE (Achieving a Better Life) Act is a good idea with massive bipartisan support. It would make it possible for people on Social Security Disability Insurance to earn and save a little money in special accounts, spending that money on qualified expenses like job coaching, extra medical help, long term care insurance, education, housing, and so forth.
Now some of the GOP is trying to kill it. Others are just trying to restrict it, allowing people with childhood diagnoses to benefit, but not anyone who becomes disabled later in life (as almost all of us will).
I have a new piece on Al Jazeera America called "Playing Politics with the Disabled." Please read it and share it. I think the bill may well pass next week, but we need to fight for a bill that supports everyone, not just the GOP's chosen "good" disabled.
Here's the politics:
In recent weeks, the Heritage Foundation has launched an attack on ABLE. It’s unclear whether they can sway enough members of Congress to derail the legislation, but the writers of a Heritage Foundation report have tapped into two arguments embedded in Republican discourse about poverty and disability. First, they call ABLE a welfare bill, even though ABLE doesn’t provide benefits, because there will be some people currently not on SSDI (because they work or have a little savings) who will be able to join the program.
The more interesting Heritage Foundation criticism emerges at the end of the report. The authors write that if ABLE passes, “eligibility for ABLE accounts should be limited to children with clear clinical conditions that create severe disability; for example, blindness or Down’s syndrome.” Those two examples reveal profound ignorance about disability. Both conditions can create severe challenges but are nothing like each other in kind, especially in the context of the work environment.
Both conditions are, though, generally sympathetic ones. Here, the Heritage Foundation is attempting to separate out only the most worthy among the disabled in order to narrow the bill. The House bill, in which only those who became disabled before the age of 26 would be eligible, does something similar. For the House, children born blind would be eligible but not people who became blind in their 40s.
The House bill and the Heritage critique emerge from the Republican worldview about poverty and disability. As recently as last July, Senate Republicans were attacking SSDI as packed with fraudsters, comparing the bad people of SSDI with the ostensibly more worthy elderly poor who rely on the main Social Security funds.
Much worse, North Carolina’s Sen.-elect Thom Tillis said in 2011, “What we have to do is find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on assistance. We have to show respect for that woman who has cerebral palsy and had no choice in her condition, that needs help and that we should help. And we need to get those folks to look down at these people who choose to get into a condition that makes them dependent on the government.” Tillis wants people with cerebral palsy and similar conditions to “look down” on those deemed less worthy. That’s the underlying perspective for the Heritage Foundation as well and a bias built into the House bill.
Support the sympathetic, divide and conquer, cut off the rest.
We've seen this before. We need to stop it.
Thanks for reading.
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I am a freelance columnist, blogger, long-time member of this site, and history professor. You can read my blog at How Did We Get Into This Mess?
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