Achieving A Better Life Experience Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I have been working with Mr. Crenshaw, with Senator Casey, and I congratulate them on this bill. But I want to say how deeply I regret that there are extraneous provisions in the bill concerning worker protections and offsets that keep it from being the bipartisan bill that it means to be, or else we wouldn't have seen virtually the whole House on the bill. So I have come to speak for the underlying bill and to hope that those provisions will somehow be swept aside and we can have the bill that I think most who signed on thought they were signing.

We talk on both sides of the aisle, as well we should, about personal responsibility, but what we have been doing until this time was leaving the disabled dependent on their own parents or on charities without any way to liberate themselves from others. I think about the parents of 20-year-old autistic brothers who kept them locked up and had no way to liberate them or to care for them.

Most woeful is dependence on charities who, themselves, get tax exemptions to take care of people who need them, and they do an excellent job. But, if we are going to give a tax break to people who take care of disabled people, surely there should be a tax benefit for them to take care of themselves.

And just consider this: most disabled people, truly disabled people, are unable to find jobs of any kind; but if they do, they will not be the kinds of jobs normally that leave them able to open savings accounts, prepare for their own retirement, and the rest. So even if they were able to be employed, they still, of course, must look to other sources of income

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Ms. NORTON. That is why this bill, in many ways, is so sensitive. It doesn't supplant any of the assistance that is necessary, like Medicaid and their own insurance that they may have or SSI.

My own daughter, Katherine Felicia Norton, was the Global Down Syndrome ambassador this year. Katherine will probably not need one of these savings accounts. But I am here this afternoon to speak for all of those who do--and there are millions in our country--and to thank particularly the sponsors for what they are trying to do with this bill.

I thank my good friend for yielding to me.

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