Rick Lazio: “this morning we are going to have an opportunity to stand up for the most vulnerable members of society, the disabled…”

“this morning we are going to have an opportunity to stand up for the most vulnerable members of society, the disabled and the elderly. There will be an amendment that was debated on the floor yesterday that will be up for a vote. We will have a chance to step forward and to do something important in terms of providing shelter and housing to give people the ability to have a meaningful life who have disabilities and who are elderly. Now, when we talk about the word ``disabled,'' it is almost a sanitized word, but let us think about it in terms of the veteran who has returned from the war and who is in a wheelchair and lost his legs, or the 90-year-old grandmother who is in a wheelchair and wants her own home, not a nursing home, or the young girl who has lost her sight, and the young man who was born so mentally challenged that he needs the help that only a community house can provide to him. In 1996, we were spending about $387 million out of a $30 billion budget for housing for the disabled. We are now talking about reducing funding down to $174 million. Please vote for the Lazio amendment that will restore about $40 million of that.”