Vice President George H.W. Bush supported the 1988 draft of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as a candidate for President of the United States. However, he also chaired a 1981 task force formed by President Reagan on regulatory relief that opposed previous President Jimmy Carter’s U.S. Department of Transportation’s Section 504 regulation that required 50% of new bus purchases to be accessible.
The Reagan Administration withdrew the accessibility requirement, imposing merely an obligation on transit systems to certify in writing that special efforts were made for the elderly and disabled. Transit operators had a complete and total victory at the federal level as VP Bush and President Reagan did the transit operators’ bidding.
The task force, however, was not as successful with the 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act, now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The task force specifically targeted IDEA because of the high costs it imposed on states and public school systems. Until that law was passed, children with disabilities were not entitled to a free, appropriate, public education; school systems did not have an obligation to educate children with disabilities in the most integrated setting possible; and if children couldn’t be accommodated in public schools, those schools did not have to pay for private placements. When Reagan got elected these were still new requirements and local governments and school systems wanted relief.
About one year after VP Bush’s task force began trying to “relieve” schools of IDEA obligations, he announced that they had abandoned the effort.
Why was the Reagan Administration successful in derailing accessible transit (which delayed it for a decade) and unsuccessful when it tried to undo the obligation to educate children with disabilities? Parents. That’s the answer.
Parents will move mountains for their children, especially if they are threatened. Years of parent advocacy had resulted in IDEA and the task force on regulatory reform was trying to go backwards. A deluge of letters and phone calls from parents intimidated even IDEA’s strongest political opponents. Bush credited the task force retreat to parents’ letters stating how bad it was for their children before IDEA, asserting their kids would not receive necessary services if IDEA was weakened.
President George H.W. Bush is my ADA hero. Without his support, Republicans would not have supported the bill. He opposed accessible transit but then supported the ADA, which required accessible transit. He opposed IDEA requirements but supported the ADA. Was he a hypocrite? No. He was enlightened. The VP realized, when running for President, that subsidizing people with disabilities to stay home, living in poverty, trapped on their block, ignored, overlooked and discriminated against was expensive. People with disabilities were being educated in public schools and would be job ready. Healthcare advances were extending life expectancies. The ADA was Bush’s blueprint for the independence of people with disabilities. Accommodation of people with disabilities could become the norm, Bush knew, and that was the only affordable and morally responsible position for his administration.
Very little is practical or ethical in Washington, D.C. and even less is progressive now. Doing something merely because it is the right thing to do seems foolish to many of our representatives. But President George H.W. Bush found that accommodation was not merely the right thing do; it was the most practical as well.
Opinions expressed are solely those of the writer(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Able News at The Viscardi Center and/or The Viscardi Center.