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Current News State News Federal News DPC Conference Call May 8, 2008On the Hill: It is chaos on the hill. In the House, the Republicans are so angry with the Democrats for cutting them out of offering amendments on the floor, which is exactly what they did for the last six years. But now the shoe is on the other foot. The Republicans are pushing the buttons to the extreme, for example yesterday they spent about ½ hour lining up just to come back to change their votes. They have been doing this since Tuesday and they are continuing to do this, so that nothing can pass. It is not so bad in the Senate, but close. The Senate rules allow the minority to rule anytime. So we will have to wait and see if they ever get back to business and do the things that they are suppose to do, such as the stimulus package, war relief, and housing. So many things are stacked up and nothing is moving. FY 2008 Appropriations: No Budget Resolution, it is still possible, but doubtful because of time constraints. If the BR doesn’t pass, the Democrats must pick a number and make that number be the number that they divided up among the 12 appropriations sub-committees, for purposes of knowing the limit they have to spend on discretionary spending. Evan that may not mean anything, the notion of passing 12 appropriations bills is long gone, without even the process starting. The only one that might be passed is the Department of Defense appropriations bill. Everything else seems to be set-aside for the next President and Congress to deal with. There may be sub-committee mark-ups, there may be full committee mark-ups, and there may even be floor action on some. There is no expectation that this is going to go forward at all. On the emergency spending that is going on now, on the War Supplemental, there is a drastically different approach taken by the Senate and the House. We care about the War Supplemental because that is where the Medicaid Moratorium legislation is and other Human Services provisions could be tacked on as well. The House approach is lean and will probably only add Veteran’s Health and Education. The reason for this is the Democratic conservatives are insisting that anything that goes on the non-war side be paid for. They don’t have a way to pay for it, so they have to scale back. The Senate is taking the opposite approach; it looks like they are going to add on large extraneous provisions to the war bill and how they would resolve the difference between those is beyond us. Hanging over all of this is the Presidents word that he will veto any supplemental bill that exceeds even a dime over non-defense money. Our Medicaid Moratorium hangs in the balance. No Child Left Behind: There are no new proposed rules for NCLB. The last were about two weeks ago, and it was to provide more flexibility to the school system. At the same time for us, the Federal Government wants to create a National standard for Graduation. The reason they are doing that is you have 50 different standards and some of them are acceptable and others are not for purposes of student assessment and academic progress. So they are proposing a national standard: you show up in 9th grade, and you graduate in 4 years. And if for any reason a State has issues, such as Special Education, IEP’s, each state would have to go to the Federal Government on their own, and ask for waivers or special consideration, based on what they bring. We will need to respond to that and will do so sometime next week. The deadline for comments is June 23rd and we will try to get some stuff to you in time for you to chime in if you should choose to. There are 4 regional meetings on this. We will send out the locations of those meetings, shortly. Higher Education: The Senate provision on reauthorizing the part of the Higher Ed. Act that we care the most about has passed and now doesn’t need to go to conference. It now goes to the President for his signature and we think that he will sign this bill into law. This is the bill that has substantial provisions in higher Ed. for students with Intellectual Developmental Disabilities. When it is put into law we will put out an extensive Washington Watch article or information bulletin on the disability provision of that act. Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA): Over 12 years trying to get this bill passed. The Senate passed it 95 to 0, it went back to the House who passed it. The bill has two areas that are important to us. It prohibits discrimination in both Health plans and employment on the basis of Genetic Information. It also prohibits them from buying Genetic tests. It also protects employees: employers are prohibited from firing, refusing to hire, or otherwise discriminating with respect to compensation, term, conditions or privileges based on genetic information. Indiana State Law: The Supreme Court upheld the Indiana State Law in regard to Government issued Photo ID in order to vote. See Washington Watch, Volume 6, Issue 2. ADA Restoration: The Disability Community and the Business Community have been in negotiation for quite some time to find mutually agreeable language to bring this bill to the floor. There are elements of a deal in play right now - there are four main points. Fixing medicating measures is the first. Second, restoration of the third prong: in order to bring a case forward you had to be a person with a disability, a record of a disability or someone who was regarded as having a disability. The third point is a fix to limit a major life activity. The last and most controversial piece of this deal is the formation of a list with some disabilities listed and some not. Mental Retardation, Cerebral Palsy (CP) and 24 others are on the list. Those not on the list would have a higher burden proving their eligibility for ADA. There are some road blocks, the Senate wants to tweak some of the language. Also, some questions are: is Business going to support the deal, the disability community going to support, is the Senate going to support and finally will the President support. Where are we on the deal? We still have some concerns. The Arc and UCP have not taken a stand at this time. Medicaid: Senator Reid tried to put the Moratorium bill on a fast track last week. Senator Grassley is not in support of the Moratorium and Senator Coburn put a hold on the bill. The next step is unclear, possibly putting on the war supplemental bill. This is up in the air; lots of people want this bill to pass. See the Washington Watch for more information. Social Security: There are two hearings this week. One will be on the Eligibility verification systems, deters if new hires are actually eligible to work in the US. Every employer would be mandated to use an electronic verification system database which is through the SS system. Many have said that SS is already under tremendous strain - almost at the breaking point - in regard to its backlog of disability claims; any new mandated workload would be impossible for them to fulfill. It would take 2 to 3 thousand more staff to deal with this new workload. That is not even considering the fact that the 8 thousand staff is already short as it is. The other hearing was in the Senate Finance Committee regarding the problems with the SS Administration funding as it affects the field offices. The entire hearing was on the shortfall of these offices in meeting the services to the public that these offices are suppose to perform. Momentum is building in both the House and the Senate that SS Administration must be funded. Be sure and read the Washington Watch that was out yesterday. Many of the issues are discussed in it. Next conference call is May 22, 2008. The
Washington State Developmental Disabilities Council has just released its
much anticipated DVD guide to the developmental disabilities universe of
resources and services. Informing Families, Building Trust
Informing Families, Building Trust
in an ongoing effort to improve communication and access to information. An editorial board representing
families and key organizations direct the effort.
From Informing Families, Building Trust
Greetings!
The new DDD Assessment will be a big change.
Together, though, we can help people prepare for it when it begins June 1,
2007 (Note: date change). For more information, visit: www.informingfamilies.org
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