Tom Harkin: “it seems as if we can take all kinds of time on the Senate floor--hours, days--talking about how we are going to benefit…”

“it seems as if we can take all kinds of time on the Senate floor--hours, days--talking about how we are going to benefit the richest people in America, many of whom inherited their wealth. After all, that is what estates are; they are wealth that is passed on from one generation to another. I do not have anything against that, but it seems to me we spend an undue amount of time talking about how we are going to help the richest, most well-off people in our country, who, by and large, can pretty well take care of themselves. So I am going to diverge a little bit because I want to talk about a group of individuals in this country who do not fall into that Fortune 500 or 400 or whatever it is--the Forbes 400--people who have the big estates. I want to talk about a group of people who have been discriminated against in our society for far too long and with whom we in Congress had made a pact 10 years ago and President George Bush signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act to say that we, as a nation, are no longer going to tolerate discrimination against any individual in this country because of his or her disability. July 26--a couple weeks from now--will mark the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. As those of us who worked so hard for the ADA predicted, the act has taken its place among the great civil rights laws in our history.…”