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Diane Rehm: Let's go now to Allison in Bethesda, MD.
Hi, you're on the air...
Caller: Hi. Good morning.
Mr. Secretary, I'm the mother of a pre-schooler with Down syndrome
and also a proud Buffalo native embarrassed by Washington's response
to the rain today. Labor Secretary Perez: *Laughs*
Caller: But I wanted to thank you for your earlier acknowledgment
that Section 14C is a detriment to people with disabilities.
Your work at the Department of Labor and Civil Rights
Division enforcing state
and agency compliance with the 1999 Supreme Court L.C.
vs Olmstead really went such a long way toward ensuring
Americans with disabilities were served in the most integrated setting.
And yet we still have
420,000 people in America who are segregated in dayhabilitation programs
and sheltered workshops many of whom making, as you know,
less than the Federal minimum wage
and so as we talk about, you know,
wage equity and we're starting to have this national conversation about poverty
and inequity we have to include people with disabilities
because they have been,
for the past 13 years,
the poorest minority group in America.
And they have the highest rates of unemployment.
So... I'm sure you know this,
but we're talking about an estimated 4.2 million people, umm,
with intellectual or developmental disabilities
who are, here's my question,
really consigned to poverty by government policies,
so what we want to know, you know, will the Executive Order
include these people, you know,
talk about janitors,
cleaning federal buildings and cooking meals
these are often those same people making less than minimum wage.
Diane Rehm: Thanks for your call.
Labor Secretary Perez: Allison, thank you for your call and I agree with you,
I don't understand why schools are closed when it is simply raining out,
but that's the Buffalo in me speaking.
Alison, the President strongly believes that there is no such thing
as a spare American
and that's why one of his first declarations
when he first became President, uhhh,
was his Declaration of the Year of Community Living.
I was at the Civil Rights Division at the time
and I am very proud of the work
that we have done in states across this country
to ensure that people with disabilities,
including your child,
have the opportunity to realize their highest and best dreams.
We have all too frequently focused on the “dis” in the word disability
and not enough focus on the ability.
And that's what we are going to do.
The question that you asked about the Executive Order,
we're actively looking at what our legal authorities are,
and what our abilities are,
and I, I commend you to the case that we did in Rhode Island
involving sheltered workshops which was a groundbreaking case
where people with disabilities were really being warehoused in jobs
in which they were paid subminimum wage, ummm,
and really being destined to the scrap heap.
That's not America, we don't kick people to the curb
and we give them opportunity
and that's why that case in Rhode Island that we did, ahhh,
was a seminal case.
And that was a joint venture
between the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice
and I am very proud of that work
and we're going to continue to do that.