Tom Harkin: “I thank the Senator for the dialog. I thank the Senator for his statement, but I thank the Senator for his great…”

“I thank the Senator for the dialog. I thank the Senator for his statement, but I thank the Senator for his great leadership in the 1980s. When I first came here in 1985 and became a member of the Labor Committee under the leadership of Mr. Kennedy, the Senator from Massachusetts, we were beginning to develop, as the Senator knows, at that time, the underlying legislation for ADA. It was the Senator from Massachusetts who provided the great leadership that brought us together--Republicans and Democrats, Republican Attorney General, Republican President, States attorneys general, Governors--all over the country, coming together saying, finally, we have to do something about this. That is why Mr. Sutton's view is so disturbing in how he approaches this matter. As the Senator from Massachusetts so correctly stated, a lot of people are saying he was representing his client. However, he was on an NPR radio interview--not representing a client there, he was representing himself--in which he said disability discrimination in a constitutional test is hard to show, difficult to show. The Senator from Massachusetts alluded to how much work we had done to show that, 25 years of study. The first study done by Congress showing discrimination against people with disabilities was in 1965, the National Commission on Architectural Behaviors. Finally, in 1989 we passed the Americans with Disabilities Act. Mr. Sutton says that is not enough.”