[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 103 (Thursday, July 25, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7326-S7327]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


  12TH ANNIVERSARY OF ENACTMENT OF THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT

  Mrs. CLINTON. Madam President, I rise today to recognize the 12-year 
anniversary of an incredibly important step in America's continuing 
effort to expand the circle of opportunity and to realize a more 
perfect union.
  Twelve years ago today, the Americans with Disabilities Act became 
law. When we think about that remarkable day in history, we remember 
the relentless efforts of some of our colleagues who took such 
leadership in this important expansion of civil rights protections. 
Senators Harkin and Kennedy used their positions of power to fight for 
those with little or no power. Their work opened the doors to people 
with disabilities in much the same way as the Civil Rights Act had done 
three decades earlier for other Americans.
  We also remember the people who fought behind the scenes, those who 
tenaciously and selflessly advocated for equal access because they knew 
that people with disabilities were being excluded from schools, from 
jobs, from the most fundamental participation in our American way of 
life.
  One such person--someone whom I was very proud to call my friend--was 
truly the heart and soul of the disabilities civil rights movement. 
That person was Justin Dart. We lost a great American and a great 
leader with Justin's death on June 22. But because of his lifelong 
commitment to ensuring the rights and dignity of every single American, 
we will never forget him. He was not only a great and tireless leader, 
he was an extraordinary human being. Anyone who ever saw him, with his 
cowboy hat and his infectious grin, would never forget him.
  Justin Dart's passionate advocacy led many to refer to him as the 
Martin Luther King of the disabilities movement. So on Martin Luther 
King's birthday, January 15, 1998, my husband, President Bill Clinton, 
awarded Justin the Medal of Freedom, our Nation's highest civilian 
award. We also invited Justin back to the White House when we honored 
the 10th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. And 
throughout my tenure as First Lady, and since becoming a Senator from 
New York, I often sought his guidance on health and disabilities 
issues.
  Justin Dart's leadership changed the way we, as a society, think 
about people with disabilities. We all know--those of us who have lived 
long enough--that at one time we presumed a disability meant a lifetime 
of dependence. Now we know better. We know that we have countless 
Americans, of all ages, with disabilities who not only want to but can 
lead independent lives to contribute to the quality of our lives and 
our Nation's prosperity. That is why, in 1998, the Clinton-Gore 
administration formed the Presidential Task Force on Employment of 
Adults with Disabilities, and then in the year 2000 expanded its 
mission to include young people.
  This task force has been instrumental in helping us understand the 
challenges that still confront Americans with disabilities and in 
understanding, despite the extraordinary progress we have made since 
the ADA was passed, we still have a very long way to go.
  According to a recent survey of Americans with disabilities conducted 
in 2000, 56 percent of 18- to 64-year-olds with disabilities who were 
able to go to work were employed in 2000. That is up from 47 percent in 
1994.

  That is progress, but we also have to recognize that 44 percent of 
Americans with disabilities are still not working. Justin himself 
eloquently expressed the status of Americans with disabilities on the 
7th anniversary of the ADA when he said:
  The job of democracy is far from finished. Millions and millions of 
people with disabilities, in America and other lands, are still outcast 
from the good life.
  In Justin's honor, we simply have to do better.
  One of the ways I will keep honoring Justin Dart's legacy is to 
continue the fight for equal access and full funding under the 
extraordinarily important legislation passed 25 years ago to provide 
education for children with disabilities. The Individuals with 
Disabilities in Education Act, known as IDEA, has literally transformed 
the lives of countless American children.
  I have a particular connection with that law because, as a young 
lawyer just out of law school in 1973, I went to work for the 
Children's Defense Fund. We could not understand why, if you looked at 
census tracks and saw how many children were living in a particular 
area between the ages of 5 and 18 and compared that with the number of 
children enrolled in school, there was a discrepancy. There were 
children we knew living in an area but they were not in school. Where 
were they?
  We could not understand it by just looking at the statistics so we 
literally went door to door to door. I was knocking on doors in New 
Bedford, MA, asking people did they have a child who was not currently 
enrolled in school. I found blind children, deaf children, children in 
wheelchairs, children who were kept out of school because there were no 
accommodations for their education.
  I remember going into a small apartment that opened out on to a tiny 
terrace where the family had constructed a grape arbor, and it was a 
beautiful apartment with a small garden. A little girl was sitting in a 
wheelchair out on this little terrace on a summer afternoon. She had 
never been to school.
  We then, working with many other advocates for children and people 
with disabilities, wrote a report and engaged in the debate which led 
to the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act in 
1975.
  This year the HELP Committee, on which I serve, is beginning the hard 
work of reauthorizing this important legislation. When it was passed in 
the Congress in 1975, we made a promise that the Federal Government 
would pay 40 percent of the cost of educating children with 
disabilities. I thought that was a fair bargain because, clearly, 
educating a child who is blind or deaf or in a wheelchair and needs 
more help, therefore, requires more resources which is going to raise 
the costs for local communities. But it was another example of America 
doing the right thing.
  It has made such a difference. Anyone who goes into schools today and 
sees bright young children raising their hand from their wheelchair or 
walking down the hallway on braces with their friends or having someone 
help with the reading because they are blind knows what a difference it 
has made, not only for the children with disabilities but for all 
children and for the kind of society we are.
  Unfortunately, the Federal Government has never paid its fair share. 
That is something that has to change. That is something about which I 
often talked to my friend Justin Dart. He would have wanted us to keep 
going with the fight to ensure that all Americans are treated with 
dignity.

  He had a very astute way of looking at life and actions in 
Washington. He once said:

       The legitimate purpose of society and its government is not 
     to govern people and to promote the good life for them, but 
     to empower them to govern themselves and to provide the good 
     life for themselves and their fellow humans.

  As usual, Justin Dart summed it up. The Americans with Disabilities 
Act provided a firm foundation on which to build that empowerment, to 
ensure that every boy and girl, no matter what their physical or mental 
status might be, is viewed with the same respect and caring that every 
other human being deserves as well.
  Justin Dart lived it. He advocated. He harassed. He reminded. He 
prodded and promoted all of us to do better. He himself was confined to 
a wheelchair. He lived with a great deal of pain, but that smile never 
left his face. With his beloved wife and family, he showed up whenever 
the call was sounded for his championship on behalf of people who he 
never forgot and for whom he never stopped fighting.
  We will miss Justin Dart, but it is up to us to continue his legacy 
and to ensure that the work to which he gave his life continues in his 
honor and on behalf of the countless young Americans who might never 
know his name but who are given a chance to chart their own destinies 
because he came before.
  I thank my friend Justin Dart and wish him and his wonderful family 
Godspeed.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

[[Page S7327]]

  Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Clinton). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Ms. STABENOW. I thank the Senator from New York for stepping into the 
Chair for a moment this morning so I might share a few comments. I also 
congratulate her on a very eloquent statement about an extremely 
important gentleman, Justin Dart, whom I knew not as well as the 
Senator from New York but for whom I had tremendous admiration. I align 
myself with the comments concerning special education and what needs to 
be done. I thank the Senator for her advocacy this morning on that very 
important topic.

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