Obama, McCain & Disability
A Brief Overview of the Presidential Candidates' Disability Policies
Oct 29, 2008
The debates are over. The campaign trail is getting shorter and running through battleground states. The election is just six days away. We know what Barack Obama and John McCain would do about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, taxes, health care, the economy and every other major issue facing the nation. Little has been said, though, about their disability policies and how they would address the needs of this particular community. Though both Senators Obama and McCain supported the groundbreaking Civil Rights legislation known as the Americans with Disabilities Act, both men have very different disability policies. Here is a brief overview of the policies.
Barack Obama
“We must build a world free of unnecessary barriers, stereotypes, and discrimination .... policies must be developed, attitudes must be shaped, and buildings and organizations must be designed to ensure that everyone has a chance to get the education they need and live independently as full citizens in their communities.”
This quote is the lead paragraph on the web page of Barack Obama’s official website dedicated to his disability policy. The page also details Obama’s four point plan to empower individuals with disabilities in America.
Obama’s plan starts with providing people with disabilities the educational opportunities that will help them succeed. Comprising the second and third points of Obama’s plan are, respectively, an end to discrimination and the promotion of equal opportunity and and increase in the number of disabled workers gainfully employed. And lastly, support for independent and community-based living rounds out Obama’s policy.
John McCain
McCain’s disability policy has been labeled by at least one political blogger as “complete and utter craptastic-ness” and has been summarized as “(a) we need to cut costs and following from (a), (b) don’t become disabled.”
There is not a dedicated page on McCain’s website for disability policy, and no direct or indirect summary could be found. There is a page quite extensively dedicated to McCain’s plan for disabled veterans and military members. However, the entire disability community is not comprised of veterans.
Although there is no mention of a disability policy for civilians with disabilities throughout McCain’s website, it must be available somewhere. You can read the letter from the coordinator of Americans with Disabilities for McCain-Palin 2008 here.
When you go to the polls on November 4, think about the policies that will affect our community specifically as well as the ones that will affect our nation.
