Tom Harkin

As Congress and the administration move forward with health reform this year, the ADA believes that establishing nutrition standards is a part of health reform and is directly connected to prevention.

They don't much care what comes out, they just like putting money in them.

I am very supportive of how you have reformulated your products there and what we can do.

I have a problem with that. When I heard that, I thought, well, that means that if I buy something, one-third of that can be sugar.

I just find it odd that because a school board decides to let kids go off the campus, that somehow we have to permit junk food to be allowed on the campus.

How do you overcome the resistance, and what was that like, and second, address yourself again to the idea of whether we should just leave this to States and local jurisdictions or whether we should extend the nutritional guidelines to all…

If we get our kids started early in eating well and getting the right nutritious foods, they are just going to have healthier lives later on.

Sound nutrition is indispensable to preventing illness and disease and helping Americans lead healthier and longer lives and reduce health care costs.

This combined effort of three major associations and the United States military began in 2006 in an initiative to examine the nature of extremity injuries sustained during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Your commitment to building this research enterprise and enabling the Department of Defense to pursue answers to its critical medical needs must be recognized.

However, in our efforts to ensure that individuals with disabilities find employment and economic self-sufficiency, we obviously must draw a bright line in prohibiting and preventing employers from taking advantage of these vulnerable…

So we have to do all we can to promote employment for persons with disabilities. People with disabilities working have dignity and purpose.

There are also many workers with significant disabilities who are every bit as productive as the workers without disabilities, and our laws must be tightened to ensure that employers cannot use programs like 14(c) to take advantage of this.

Now the stated intention behind the 14(c) program is "to prevent the curtailment--to prevent the curtailment of employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities."

Maybe Atalissa was kind of a wake-up call to us that we have really got to look at not just that aspect, but a broader aspect of what is happening with worker exploitation.

I don't know. Do we need to put a floor under this, or do we just need to say they have to be paid the minimum wage? You know? Period. That is it.

How do we stop something like this? How do we make it more reasonable?

We have a new administration that might be more adaptable to that, too.

I think we also need to strengthen the penalty system so that people do know that if they get caught, they are going to get severely fined.

Exactly. We need everybody involved. Then we need to have it transparent, put out there so people know.

Well, like I said, that is what we are going to do. We are going to change this law some way.

Not only do you have to look at a person for their ability to do the job, but what other factors are there involved that might preclude that person from actually doing that job?

We need individual assessments of personal abilities in terms of different job sectors and jobs that they could do.

I think what you are saying is a lot of these are, what, just bargained away, and they accept some kind of a settlement?

But if it goes to the private bar, a private attorney wants the highest settlement possible. That is how they make their money.