The Question
What have you done—and
what will you do in Congress—to safeguard and expand the rights,
services and community participation of people with disabilities
in Minnesota?
Walz's Response
As an educator I spend countless hours working with disabled and
learning challenged high school students. My students have wide-ranging
challenges, and federal regulations require that I work with each
student to develop an Individualized Educational Program (IEP). As
funding for our schools is cut, my students often lose their aids,
my class size increases and I find myself creating and executing
more and more IEPs. Last year I had nearly 40 students in one class.
Of those students, seven required IEPs. I am honored that these students
often request placement in my class, but creating seven different
sets of notes, visual aids and other accommodations is more than
one teacher can handle.
My personal experience in the classroom taught me that we not only
need to increase funding for schools, we must also increase funding
for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The Congress
mandated itself to pay 40 percent of IDEA costs. To date the Congress
has never paid more the 20 percent of these costs.
In addition, we must repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and
make some tough choices about our national priorities. As a member
of Congress, my priority would be to take care of our most vulnerable
citizens: children, veterans, seniors and disabled citizens. Under
the Republican Congress, all of those groups have needlessly suffered.
I hear from pharmacists, seniors and others that Medicare Part D
is helping some, but not all, and that it is almost universally confusing.
We can and must do better.
During the course of
my campaign I’ve met with representatives
from Mankato’s MRCI center and Worthington’s CCSI organization.
These programs are doing fantastic work and are engaging people who
were once marginalized in our society. My campaign is thrilled to
have a volunteer from this community. Because of the staff at MRCI,
he is able to live independently, be a productive member of society
and an informed voter.
I believe that we as a society save money by properly funding PCA
programs, Medicaid/Medicare, IDEA and other social services. When
we support preventive and timely health care, special education and
programs that engage people in their communities, we ultimately pay
less than we would for emergency care and corrections programs.
We must prioritize the improvement
of programs that foster a better quality of life for the disabled
community, but to change the priorities we have to change the Congress. ![]()
