Alabama's Morning News with JT
Rachel Barkley from Able America-conservatives with disabilities
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Thank you, John, so glad to be here and talk about this important issue. I understand that you yourself, your dealing with a disability, we don't have to go into it in great depth, but you have a spinal cord injury, and so you've been kind of navigating the situation we're talking about. Exactly. Yes. Five years ago, this week, actually, I had a spinal cord injury from a rare tumor that moved me from non-disabled to disabled, and what I learned is that anyone can become disabled at any time. It's kind of a unique minority position in that when I look at the numbers, there are 100 million people in this country who are affected by a disability, whether they themselves have one, or they are a caretaker of a family member who has one. When you're dealing with something like that, a lot of times people, they're accommodating on the surface, but yet there's things that get in the way of being able to actually really live everyday life, especially if you are considering yourself to be independent and you don't like to have to lean on other people for things, but you could use a little bit of help here and there. Yes. A lot has actually changed in this country in the past 30 years, so the Americans with Disabilities Act passed in 1990, it was a big change in how people view people with disabilities. It used to be in the early 20th century, it was the people with disabilities weren't capable of work of families, et cetera, and now that is just not the case, we can see that with great assisted technology advances and the view of human dignity that people are equal in dignity and worth, and that's part of the American dream, that people with disabilities can work, can have families, can have lives of meaning and opportunity, and unfortunately our government programs and public policy just has not kept up with that, and so as a result, you see higher numbers of people with disabilities in poverty, who even are homeless, and who are in the workforce but want to work, and we know that in order to leave poverty to have a life of opportunity, you have to be able to work to provide for yourself and your family. And Rachel, to me, that is what's so important because I think most people, and probably you're in this boat as well, you don't want to hand out, you want to hand out, there's plenty of jobs out there that people, you're not probably going to get out there and be a construction worker digging a ditch, but that doesn't mean you can't earn a six figure salary sitting behind a computer contributing to our economy if given the opportunity, but it seems so often bureaucratic red tape and programs that we have get in the way rather than helping to actually building a hindrance to achieving those sort of goals. Exactly, exactly, and you know, there is a place for government assistance for people with disabilities, and I think we see that's what our safety net is for, our safety net is there to provide for the most vulnerable among us, and sometimes that is that people with disabilities need a caretaker to help with some health concerns, and private health insurance, it can be so cost prohibitive, you know, a private caregiver can run $100,000 or $200,000 that private insurance doesn't cover it, so people with disabilities have to use Medicaid for those type of services, but in all of our social safety net programs for people with disabilities, there are things called income and asset limits, so if somebody with a disability wants to get married, they have to make sure that they and their spouse don't go over $2,000 in savings, and you know in today's economy that if you ever want to buy a house, if you want to put kids through school, if you want to have basic savings and needs, that keeps you trapped in poverty. If you can't make above a certain income limit, if you can't save money for your future, then you can't enter the middle class, so it holds people in poverty and it holds people out of marriage, these really outdated income and asset limitations to some of these programs that people with disabilities need to either get out of poverty and have a stable job and kind of have that pathway, that bridge into the workforce, or to keep their health care. And Rachel, I find it galling in a way because you mentioned the safety net, and I think far too many, I'm quoting Rush Limbaugh from his first book, I think it was The Way Things ought to be, there's far too many people using the safety net as a hammock, and there are so many people who, they're abusing those things that were placed, put in place for people who truly need them and taking advantage of them in ways that they don't, like when I go to the grocery store and I see someone park in the handicap parking space, and it's very obvious that they don't have a handicap, at least no handicap I can see, and they get out and they go in and they get in the cart and they just look like they might be overweight. On the other hand, I see people who they're in the van that you need the wrap to come down for wheelchair, and somebody is parked right next to that space to where they can't get the wheelchair ramp down, and those people are the ones who are having the difficult time because people are being inconsiderate. So how do you deal with those challenges in day-to-day life where people are misusing those things that are put in place to help people who genuinely need them? It is a tough one, Don, because I think that it has been conservatives of long kind of focus and myself included on how do we get rid of the abuse of the system, the thought of the system. And that is certainly something that we should make sure doesn't happen, right? Abuse and fraud is never good on any government program, and those kind of agreements that myself are. I'm a wheelchair user, and I go to get my kids out of the car, and someone's parked right there, and I'm having a hard time. And so it is frustrating the abuse of the system, but I think the greater focus should be, you know, the fraud does happen, but that is such a lower incidence than all of these kind of baked-in problems, so certainly we should try to mitigate fraud, but these bigger structural problems that are facing people with disabilities, such as, you know, this income and asset limitation, and, you know, problems with airlines that don't have bathrooms for people with disabilities, and things that are baked into public policy problems that face every person with a disability, that should be, I think, our focus, and fraud should be kind of lower on the list, because instances of fraud don't impact every single day, like the lack of good health care when you go to get a job, or the ability to get into an airplane and have a bathroom there. Very true. Well, Rachel, I want to thank you so much for joining us. For more information about ABLE Americans, where can our listeners go? ABLE Americans is a project at the National Center for Public Policy Research, the national center.org, and you can find ABLE Americans' resources there. Rachel Barklow, thank you for joining us this morning on Alabama's Morning News. Thank you, John, for having me. 5280 exteriors James Hardy Siding is a low-maintenance siding made primarily of cement that resists flame spread and repels woodborne insects and woodpeckers. Through the month of July, you'll receive free rigid foam installation with the purchase of whole-house siding. It's installing additional insulation behind your siding for free. But only for the month of July. Call today for more details or visit 5280exteriors.com, 5280exteriors.com, a James Hardy preferred contractor, 5280 Exteriors, the altitude of quality. [BLANK_AUDIO]