Political Quotes

“Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to this amendment. I rise in opposition because I know what it's like to live with and to travel with a disabled person--my brother-in-law, a very distinguished retired lawyer who actually was injured in a diving accident and is paralyzed from the waist down. I never fully had an appreciation for ADA until I started living with him and realized, as he said, that the ADA was not a zoning ordinance about construction; the ADA is a civil right that this Congress enacted 22 years ago. It was remarkable legislation. And to govern that legislation, we have an access board who are not made up of, as someone said, bureaucrats, but they're made up of citizens who are appointed, I guess, all by the President. And I watched, because my brother-in-law was appointed to that board under President Clinton. I've watched that board as they go through all kinds of issues dealing with people with disabilities very conscientiously, thorough hearings, lots of discussions about how to implement it, and I'm just shocked that Congress would think that we ought to take away an access. I'm sure these same debates were given when people said, well, we shouldn't do curb cuts; they cost money, and there is nobody standing on that curb that needs it. Ladies and gentlemen, curb cuts make a big difference not just for people that are disabled, but just for elderly people who can't be that lift.…”