By Barbara McKee / Tribune
Columnist
May 3, 2005
"When
the going gets tough, the tough get going" - I've used
this cliché on my kids, my husband, my friends and
myself ever since my mom said it to me the first time a
kid bullied me about my disability. It's a mantra I
recite when the government, health care workers or
employers try to get rid of me.
But some people, especially those fighting the Bush
administration, have reached the end of their ability to
stay tough.
Joanne Wilson, for example, left her job as
commissioner of the U.S. Rehabilitation Services
Administration on March 1, in protest against what she
said were the administration's largely unnoticed efforts
to gut the office's funding and staffing.
The Rehabilitation Services Administration provides
money, technical assistance and oversight to state
agencies that, in turn, provide rehabilitative and
vocational services to people who are blind, deaf,
paralyzed or intellectually disabled. Services include
training on how to live independently, navigate
communities and develop marketable skills.
The U.S. Department of Education, which oversees the
Rehabilitation Services Administration, is cutting
budgets by combining money for job placement programs
for disabled and able-bodied people. The department also
is cutting staff redrawing guidelines. Wilson argues
this will give the able-bodied an advantage, because the
department has quotas to fill for job placement, and the
able-bodied are much easier to place.
"Programs for people with disabilities are being
dismantled, and nobody is crying out and saying, `Look
what's happening,' " said Wilson, formerly one of
the government's highest-ranking disabled officials.
Wilson, who is visually impaired, is a product of
job-placement programs for the disabled, who educated
herself and worked her way up to commissioner of the
Rehabilitation Services Administration.
"I've been employed for 40 years and paid a lot
of taxes back into the system. I couldn't have gotten
that if I had walked into a generic job placement
program," Wilson said.
Fredric Schroeder, Rehabilitation Services
Administration commissioner under the Clinton
administration, is pairing with Wilson to draw attention
to the proposed consolidation. Schroeder said the new
job program would not be able to provide the same range
of the often expensive and extensive services the
Rehabilitation Services Administration offers.
Every time there is a consolidation of programs that
involve the disabled and non-disabled, the disabled land
at the bottom. First, funding for housing the disabled
was consolidated; now job placement funding is in
jeopardy.
You can't cut benefit programs on both ends. The
disabled need a place to live to get a job. You need a
job to get a place to live. Cut both programs, and you
have only one resort left: nursing homes and
institutions. But, wait - isn't that what's causing such
strains on Medicaid? Well, do the math, you geniuses in
Washington. The only place left is the streets.
I pray that whoever takes Wilson's place has 40 years
worth of fighting in them. The survival of job rights
for the disabled depends on it.
You can e-mail Barbara J. McKee at chairgrrl@chairgrrl.com.
Her column runs on Tuesdays.
