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We wrap up our series on the battle for the passage of the ADA with none other than Senator Tom Harkin. Senator Harkin was the lead sponsor of the ADA in the Senate and has spent his career being a steadfast ally to the disability community. In this interview we talk to him about what that was like, where we need to go from here, and he even stumps us with a bit of disability rights trivia.
Full transcript available at: https://www.ndrn.org/resource/ndr-harkin/
Michelle Bishop:
Welcome back to another episode of National Disability Radio. This is the final in our series on the anniversary of the ADA. So before we jump into a very special guest that we have for you this episode, I am one of your podcast hosts, Michelle Bishop, the voter access and engagement manager at NDRN.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
And I’m Stephanie Flynt McEben, public policy analyst here at NDRN, and another host, or one of our other hosts, for our podcast today.
Michelle Bishop:
Okay. Clearly taking his side, Stephanie. Clearly taking his side.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Okay. Okay. But Jack has proven that he is worthy of host,
Michelle Bishop:
Producer and pro host extraordinaire, please introduce yourself.
Jack Rosen:
Thank you, Stephanie. I appreciate the support. Hi, producer and host, Jack Rosen, here. Really excited about today’s episode. This guest has been at the top of our wish list for a while now, and we are so thrilled to have him on. So I suppose we want to just get into it. Michelle, why don’t you tell the folks that we have on today?
Michelle Bishop:
We’re really excited today to be talking to the honorable Senator Tom Harkin, who was so instrumental in so much of the early disability rights movement and passage of the ADA. In 1974, Tom Harkin was elected to Congress from Iowa’s 5th Congressional District. In 1984, after serving 10 years in the US House of Representatives, Senator Harkin was elected to the Senate and reelected in 1990, 1996, 2002, and 2008. He retired from the US Senate in January of 2015.
I use the term retired loosely. He is still very active in the movement. As a young senator, Tom was tapped by Senator Ted Kennedy to craft legislation to protect the civil rights of millions of Americans with physical and mental disabilities. He knew firsthand about the challenges facing people with disabilities from his late brother Frank, who was deaf from an early age. What emerged from that process would later become his signature legislative achievement, the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In September 2009, following the death of Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Harkin became chairman of the Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions, or as we know it, HELP Committee. Senator Harkin believed that to serve in this capacity was to carry on the legacy which helped lead to the passage of the Affordable Care Act. In 2015, Senator Harkin and Ruth Harkin establish the Harkin Institute for Public Policy and Citizen Engagement at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa to inform citizens, inspire creative cooperation, and catalyze change on issues of social justice, fairness, and opportunity. The institute works to improve the lives of all Americans by giving policymakers access to high quality information and engaging citizens as active participants in the formation of public policy. Senator Harkin, thank you so much for joining us today.
Jack Rosen:
So we’re sitting here today with Senator Tom Harkin for our series commemorating the 35th Anniversary of the passage of the ADA. This is Producer Jack Rosen. I am joined by my co-hosts, Michelle Bishop and Stephanie Flynt. And to kick things off, we wanted to ask you, one thing we’ve found when talking to some of the folks who were involved in the passage of the ADA is that they recalled that was quite a fight to get people with HIV, AIDS and mental illness, as well as substance use disorders covered at the time, especially being 1990 and there was a lot of stigmatization of people with HIV, AIDS. Could you talk a little bit about that fight and why it was important for you to make sure those groups were included?
Senator Harkin:
Well, yes, because we didn’t want to leave any element of a disability group out of the coverage of the bill, want to be comprehensive. You start carving out one group, then there’s somebody else will carve out somebody else and the thing falls apart. The HIV, AIDS thing came up because there was so much misinformation about AIDS and how people got it. And a lot of it, let’s face it, was based on homophobia at that time. And we had some purveyors in the country and in the Senate of that kind of discrimination. Former Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina is predominant among that.
And so they tried to do whatever they could to carve out that portion of our populace. Well, we were successful in the Senate in keeping it out, but the House at the last minute added what was called the Chapman Amendment. Chapman was a congressman from Texas. I think that’s right, from Texas. And at the last minute they added the Chapman Amendment to preclude coverage of the ADA for anybody with HIV or AIDS. It wasn’t just AIDS, it was HIV too, a huge populace.
Well, as we pointed out at the time, everyone thought well, you only got HIV if you were practicing unsafe, same-sex. But we knew from medical studies and stuff that that just wasn’t so, it was absolutely not so at all. Well, Chapman Amendment came on at the last minute. Now keep this in mind, it’s a little bit in the weeds here on legislation. But we had passed our bill in September of 1989. It went to the House, got stuck in the House all winter until we had what was called the Capitol Crawl in March. After that, it began to get loosened up and we got it through the House, but not until the last minute the Chapman Amendment was at.
And so when we went to conference… Okay, so the Senate had one bill, the House had another bill. When we went to conference, the Senate voted to instruct conferees as did the house, to instruct conferees to accept the Chapman Amendment. Well, of course, I’m the head of the subcommittee. I’m the person leading the charge on this and negotiating with the house. And we met with the disability community. And basically, I’ll tell you, the disability committee held together. They said, “If they’re out, we’re out. We won’t have a bill.” They had worked for so long and so hard to get this done.
Well, so here’s what happened. We enlisted a person who had been sort of with us all along, but sort of dragged along kicking and screaming, and that was Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. And finally, the disability community came to him and some people he knew in Utah and said, “Look, we can’t afford to let this bill die. We got to save this bill.” And so a few people came to meet with Senator Hatch and convinced him to have a substitute for the Chapman Amendment that basically said that in disregard of HIV, AIDS, et cetera, that we would rely upon the latest and best medical and scientific studies and results in order to determine the further course of action.
Anyway, it was just… got rid of the Chapman Amendment and substituted this language of we’ll take the latest scientific… And we sold it on that basis. We sold it to the Senate, even though they instructed them to accept the Chapman Amendment. We went back to them and said, “Look, this is a great compromise. Who can argue that we shouldn’t use the best scientific and medical information and data?” And that’s what we did, and that was the end of it. And so then the House went back and they passed it and it came back to the Senate and we substituted our bill, because we had some different things in it. So we took my bill, the bill we’d drafted and made it the final bill and sent it to the White House. That’s a long story, but it was very involved.
Michelle Bishop:
It’s actually one of my favorite stories, though, I have to say, Senator, about the passage of the ADA. It was such a moment in time and the way that the disability rights community really stood together-
Senator Harkin:
Yeah, you did.
Michelle Bishop:
… in a business where it would be very easy to say, “Okay, we’ll cut these folks out and we’ll get this for the rest of us.” The way the community really stood together and the way that you released stood your ground as well for what was right for people with disabilities.
Senator Harkin:
Well, I’ll tell you a little story that happened before, before the Chapman Amendment, but it was right about that same time. We still had some people in the disability community that were just… They wanted this, they wanted that, and I understood that. So I got Pat Wright and some others too from California. Who am I thinking of? I just lost the name in my… Anyway, Pat Wright was there from Oakland. Who am I thinking of? The Ed Roberts Center?
Michelle Bishop:
Yes. It’s actually the original independent living center in Berkeley, the Ed Roberts and the Rolling Quads and…
Senator Harkin:
What’s it called? It was called… There’s just been a disconnect between my brain and my vocal cords.
Michelle Bishop:
Sir, that happens to me frequently.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Yeah, same.
Senator Harkin:
Okay, back up. So Pat Wright, who had been with us from the very beginning, fighting for this from the outside, so I got Pat and I said, “Look, bring together as many in the disability community you can, and we’re going to meet in that big hearing room in the Dirksen building that I had jurisdiction over.” And it was like five o’clock in the afternoon and it was packed. Everyone was there. National Federation of the Blind, National Association of the Deaf, Cerebral Palsy, on and on and on and on and on and on. They were all there. And I had Bobby Silverstein with me. And Bobby was my staff director who really, really probably single-handedly was more responsible for the ADA than any other single person. So I said to Bobby, I said, “Look, get all these people together.” I said, “I’m going to lay the law down to them.” He said, “Okay.”
He didn’t really know what I was going to do. So we got all these people in the room and I said, “Look, we’ve been through a long fight. We’ve held together, but there’s some people that are holding out that haven’t quite got on board yet.” I said, “Look, I’m about to bring this bell out on the floor, but,” I said, “I’m not going to do it unless you all agree. Unless everybody here agrees and they’re not going to be sniping in the back about this isn’t in and that is.” I said, “Now look, it’s a little after five o’clock, I have to go attend to something. I’m going to leave Bobby Silverstein here in charge. And I’m going to come back, I’ll be back in about an hour and we’ll see. If you agree on what I’ve just laid out, I’ll be on the floor tomorrow with the bill. If you don’t agree, we’ll all go home and that’s the end of it. So I’ll see you in about an hour.” And I walked out. I left Bobby holding the bag.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Oh my God.
Senator Harkin:
But he was good. He was great. And so I did. I came back in about an hour and one by one, all these different groups were on board. “No, we’re not going to try to do anything in the back round. Yes, we’re…” And that was it. And then I got to take the bill on the floor.
Michelle Bishop:
That’s incredible. Well, our thanks to Bobby as well then for that work.
Senator Harkin:
Right.
Michelle Bishop:
Before we switched the mic on we were talking about all the unsung heroes of the ADA, and especially the people who do the drafting. Right?
Senator Harkin:
Yeah.
Michelle Bishop:
Somebody sits down and writes the language.
Senator Harkin:
Right.
Michelle Bishop:
And one of the things that strikes me about the ADA, in addition to being this really powerful moment in time for our movement, is that as folks who work in the disability rights movement now, the ADA itself is such an incredible piece of legislation. It was really built on, in my mind, a very clear record of discrimination against people with disabilities. And the bill itself I think is clear and specific and detailed in what it asks of us. It doesn’t just say, “You can’t discriminate. It has to be accessible.” It tells you what that means.
It charges agencies like the Access Board with creating regulations that are incredibly clear. And so for those of us who are doing the work these days, who rely so much on everything that the ADA lays out, and it’s certainly in an era of courts that really maybe look to limit its power somewhat, to me, the clarity and the specificity of the ADA is something that is really unique for a landmark piece of civil rights legislation. And I was wondering if at the time that you were doing this work, did you know how important that was and how unique this bill was? Or what is it to you that makes the ADA stand the test of time?
Senator Harkin:
Yes, we knew. We knew we were doing something that was both kind of profound, but also that we put in language that we thought would tell the courts what we really wanted to do. And of course, as you know, much of the provisions of the ADA are based on Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Is that right?
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Yes.
Senator Harkin:
Yes. 1973, right. And so we lifted a lot of language from that. And we had the help of person who had been involved with 504. Well, I’m sorry, I just lost a name. I see him in my mind’s eye. I mean, he’s still alive. I mean like me, we’re old and we can’t remember our names. So he was still there, and he came in and was very helpful on the language and putting it together with Bobby Silverstein, who was my staffer, a lawyer. Heifelblum, another lawyer, she was at Georgetown at the time. Arlene Meyerson, another lawyer out in San Francisco or Oakland there. DREDF, that’s the name of it. The Disability Rights and Education Defense Fund.
Michelle Bishop:
Yes.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Yes.
Senator Harkin:
That’s who Pat Wright was with, and that was sort of our organization on the outside.
Michelle Bishop:
I used to work for Robert Funk, who’s a disability rights attorney back at the time, who was part of the founding of DREDF as well. Yeah.
Senator Harkin:
But, he was with DREDF.
Michelle Bishop:
Yeah, yeah.
Senator Harkin:
So, yes, we knew we wanted to be more specific in the language, and we thought we were pretty specific. Again, we had different people meet with different senators and different staffs. And well, it worked out fine. Now, again, I must tell you that it came to quite a surprise to us in 1999, 9 years later, when the Supreme Court decided those three cases, we call it the Sutton Trilogy. There were three cases that decided in one day that just tore apart the ADA in terms of employment.
We were, I thought, quite specific in our findings. I remember I was at the Supreme Court the day they handed down the decision. I was there with Bob Dole, who was also a big supporter of ours and getting the ADA through. And I remember we walked out and met the press, and I remember Bob Dole saying, “Well, they said we didn’t have enough…” I think it was Scalia, maybe I forget who it was, said, well, we didn’t have enough data to support this or something. And Dole said, “Well…” Now again, don’t hold me to this figure. But he said, “We had like 200 specific instances of these violations. Now I wish they had’ve told us do they need 210? Do they need 220?”
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
227.
Senator Harkin:
So he was really poking fun at the Supreme Court. Well, because of that decision, it held up employment. Because the employers really didn’t know what to do and the people with disabilities who wanted to be employed didn’t really know what to do. I can get into that more if you want, but it’s kind of in the weeds. But it had to do with whether you self-identified as someone with a disability. If you did, were you still covered by the ADA?
It took us another almost nine years to get it corrected, and we worked through those years. And the second Bush came to office, he didn’t hold us up, but everybody got involved in 9/11 and the war in Iraq, and just one thing after another. But finally in 2008, his last year in office, we got it through, and that was the ADA Act Amendments of 2008, which told the Supreme Court, “Here’s what we meet,” basically.
Michelle Bishop:
Right.
Senator Harkin:
And so we redrafted some portions of the ADA to make it quite clear what it is we meant. And since that time, we’ve had a clear course on this whole idea of employment. That’s one of the reasons why employment was set back so far. I mean, we went for… Well, you figure that was 2009, that’d be 19 years? 2008, so 18 years. Am I right? Yes, that’s’ right, 2008.
Michelle Bishop:
Yes. I had to think about it too.
Senator Harkin:
So we basically went 18 years without really having a clear delineation and upholding of court decisions on employment. Just held us. We did all right on transportation. We did okay on an independent living with the Olmstead Decision and other things like that, but employment was held up back… And in 18… that was ’08, by the time we got the new rules drafted, you’re talking about 2010. So it set us back about 20 years on employment.
Michelle Bishop:
I know Stephanie asked something she wants to ask you about, but I got to jump in real quick. I just wanted to say quickly, I’m so glad you mentioned Senator Dole because we often find that really champions of disability rights issues come from both sides of the aisle.
Senator Harkin:
That’s true.
Michelle Bishop:
That it’s not so much a partisan issue as it is if you are a person with a disability or you love someone with a disability, you see how it impacts people’s lives and you just get it.
Senator Harkin:
Right.
Michelle Bishop:
And that’s been, to me, something that just makes disability rights such a unique space to work in.
Senator Harkin:
Yeah.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
And just to add on to that, disability is the characteristic that affects one in four Americans. And also anyone can become a member of the disability community at any time. It intersects with every single minority group. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but that’s definitely something.
Senator Harkin:
Right, yeah. Yes, exactly right. You can become a member of the disability community at any point in time. And as some of us grow older and we can’t hear worth a darn, now we’re finding out that we have to lean on a lot of things for closed captioning and things like that.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Yeah. No, for sure. For sure.
Senator Harkin:
I have to give you another little bit of a thing. I know you’re talking about the ADA.
Michelle Bishop:
Yeah.
Senator Harkin:
Before the ADA passed, I got another bill through. Now people always say I’m the author of the ADA and all that, but I don’t say that. People say that, but I don’t say that. I always say the author of the ADA were the many thousands of people with disabilities that marched, that laid under the wheels of the Greyhound buses, that got arrested and thrown in jail, and then the staff and everybody. Did I have a hand in it? Yeah. I’m the lead sponsor, so I was the person that brought it through legislatively and got it passed. Okay, fine. I accept that. But there was one bill that I was the author of and got it through my committee and got it through the Senate and the House and got it signed by the president, that really changed a lot. And no one knows I ever did it. It was called the Television Decoder and Circuitry Act. I bet you’ve never heard of it?
Michelle Bishop:
No.
Jack Rosen:
I don’t think I have.
Michelle Bishop:
I was like, “He’s not going to stump us. We do this for a living.”
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Yes.
Michelle Bishop:
And then you did.
Senator Harkin:
You can look it up. I forget the public law number of it. But the Television Decoder and Circuitry Act, I had hearings on it. Here’s what happened. I had a brother who’s deaf, and so I got involved in the late ’70s and early ’80s in establishing the National Captioning Institute out in Alexandria, Virginia. And while I was only peripheral to the other aspect of the television stations’ networks making agreements to have certain programs captioned, in order to get the captions you had to buy a box. There was a big set top box, like a VCR you put on your television. You hooked it up.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Oh wow.
Senator Harkin:
And if the program had been re-recorded, then you could see the captions. Well, so I got the first TV decoder like that, was delivered to Jimmy Carter in the White House by me and Senator Jennings Randolph of West Virginia. Okay, so I got my brother one and put on the TV out in Iowa, and he could now watch programs. Some of the early programs like the Ed Sullivan Show. It was always done before an audience, but not live. It was an audience and then you would see it on television. And then there were other programs that were done and then shown later, but not in front of an audience. Okay?
Michelle Bishop:
Mm-hmm.
Senator Harkin:
You could get those captioned by the National Captioning Institute. So my brother got this box and he started watching this, fine. Along about the late ’80s, I’m now in the Senate and I get a visit paid by an individual who said, “We now are developing these computer chips. And all that stuff in that big box you have that Sears Roebuck sold…” You can only buy it from Sears, and they agreed to sell it at cost, and it was expensive, $279 at that time.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Wow.
Jack Rosen:
Oh wow.
Michelle Bishop:
Wow.
Senator Harkin:
That was expensive. So they said, “All this in it, we can put it on a computer chip like size of your thumbnail.” I said, “Really?” “Yeah.” I said, “Well, I got to find out more about it.” I had hearings from my disability policies, my subcommittee. So I had hearings on this. And I’m just a freshman senator, but Kennedy had agreed to give me this disability subcommittee called the Subcommittee on the Handicapped. So I had these hearings. I brought in the TV manufacturers. I remember it was Motorola, Sylvania, some of the other ones, maybe… There were a number of US manufacturers of TVs. I don’t remember if Sony… I’d have to go back and check. They may not even have been around at that time. I don’t know.
Michelle Bishop:
No idea. That’s a good question.
Senator Harkin:
So my ask was, “I understand we can…” “Yeah. Well…” They looked at, “Yeah, you could put all that in a TV set.” But here was the catch, but it’s going to cost anywhere from 100 to $200 more per TV to do that. Well, so I checked with my staff and they said, “You can’t get a bill through that’s going to increase the cost of a TV set by a couple of hundred dollars.” So I called in this friend of mine in the chip business. I said, “Well, is it really going to cost that much?” And he said, “Yes, if you make 10 of them or if you make a hundred of them, but if you were to make millions of them, why the cost would almost be nothing.” It’s like a light bulb went off in my head.
So I drafted a bill to mandate that every television set sold in America, not made here, sold in America that had a size 13-inch screen or bigger… Now, don’t ask me… There was some technical problem in doing it smaller than that with the captions.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Interesting
Senator Harkin:
Every television set sold in America size 13-inch screen or… had to have embedded in the television set itself this decoding chip, and I got it through.
Michelle Bishop:
Can I also thank you as someone who watches everything with the captions on.
Senator Harkin:
I know.
Michelle Bishop:
I don’t even have hearing loss. I watch everything with the captions on.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
My spouse is the same way.
Senator Harkin:
Well, we got it through, and we had a phase in period of several years. And what happened is J.W. Marriott Hotel… There was someone in his family who was disabled. I had a conversation with him at that time with J.W., Bill Marriott, I think. Was it Bill? I forget, one of them. Because they decided, not that they had to, it wasn’t part of the law, but they decided to take out all their TVs and all their hotels and replace them with TVs with these computer chips and use it as a marketing tool.
Michelle Bishop:
Wow. Awesome. That’s a great idea.
Senator Harkin:
Which they did. And of course, once they did that, then Holiday Inn and a Hilton and everybody… So there was this big rush to buy all these TV sets with these computers chips in them. And that happened. And years later, I remember I had a hearing on this and asked what the additional cost was for the chip. It’s not even factored in the price.
Michelle Bishop:
Wow.
Senator Harkin:
It’s just part of the internal operations. All the other things they’ve done with smart TVs and all, well, yeah, that’s factored in the price. But the computer chip isn’t, is so that’s why you have a remote and you can get the closed captions and all that kind of stuff. So there you go.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Really? That’s amazing.
Senator Harkin:
There you go, long story.
Michelle Bishop:
Okay. We led you all around. We led you all around, Stephanie, but I actually know you wanted to ask about technology anyway, so it might be a nice segue.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Yeah, I was going to say that is a really good segue. Talking a lot about technology and the ADA and the efforts around the captioning devices. The ADA was written in a different era in regards to technology, and of course addresses the technology of its time and how those things go about. And of course, in 1990, I’m sure we couldn’t have imagined a world with smartphones and Amazon Prime-
Senator Harkin:
No.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
… all of these things, the AI, all of this technology that’s around. So how do you think that the ADA needs to be adapted to today’s tech?
Senator Harkin:
Well, my short answer it has been adapted. I mean, the language and the way we drafted it, I think has been very well incorporated in the new technological world. I mean, I may not see what is happening there that I don’t know about. Maybe you do, I don’t know. But I think technologically we have pretty much… I think the ADA pretty much has stood the test of the time on that. I’m trying to think of some instances where we had problems. Do you know of any?
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Yeah. So I think something that I’ve heard in various circles and in doing this work, it’s true that the ADA is enforceable when it comes to technology. But because of the fact that technology has just continued to evolve more and more and more over time, there’s been various guidance and that sort of thing that’s been issued in order to keep up with the times. And so I think that that’s kind of with the evolution of technology in mind, if that makes sense.
Michelle Bishop:
And we came to meet you today by using a smartphone app to call a car to come pick us up, which-
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
I feel like in the ’90s would you-
Michelle Bishop:
… that is a different world.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Would people have done that in 1990, requested a random car to come and pick you up versus a cab company?
Michelle Bishop:
But it opens up a whole new industry of people’s private cars or private homes being kind of a part of business now in a way.
Senator Harkin:
Now, you’ve jogged my thinking a little bit here. There has been over the last few years, a focus on making the ADA adaptable to programming and to software development and software design. It’s not so much just the hardware, but the software needs to be accessible for people with different accessibility problems.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Yeah, absolutely.
Senator Harkin:
And so we have been working with the Accessibility Board, I think it’s called.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
The Access Board?
Senator Harkin:
And with getting some national standards on making sure that software at the very beginning [inaudible 00:31:02] incorporates within the software accessibility standards for people who have a learning disability, for people who may have an intellectual disability, for a person with cerebral palsy, for example, who has a hard time navigating boards and things like that and needs a different type of a device. For example, software that will allow a person with a pointer… They put it on their head. Maybe you’ve heard about these?
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Yes. Yeah.
Senator Harkin:
They’re fantastic, but the software has to… All of the software that you might access that way has to be accessible for that kind of technology.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Right, right. Yeah.
Senator Harkin:
So that has been something that obviously we didn’t think about in ’90, obviously.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Well, of course, I mean, there was no way to know, right?
Senator Harkin:
But through court cases, we have developed the law that’s pretty good on this. I often liken it to this, that when our framers drafted the Constitution, they drafted… As you know, one one of the provisions of the Constitution as a provision against illegal searches and seizures. Your house is your castle. They can’t just go into your house and search through your drawers and stuff like that without a court…
Michelle Bishop:
Without a warrant.
Senator Harkin:
… warrant for something. Well, television or telephones weren’t around then. So when telephones came in later, could they tap your phone, huh? Well, it wasn’t in the Constitution.
Michelle Bishop:
Right, yeah.
Senator Harkin:
But there was a court case that said, “Well…” It’s the same thing. It’s basically the same. And so that has evolved. So that same kind of court adapting what we wanted to protect or do in the beginning changed by technology, they just adapted it to the new technology. That’s our hope on these court cases that a lot of them… aside from the Sutton Trilogy in 1999. But once we corrected it, that was it, it’s worked ever since. The court had a very… And maybe we weren’t clear enough. I thought we were, but maybe we weren’t.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
No, I think that that makes a whole lot of sense. And I just thank you so much for your leadership on that. And, again, there’s just no way that we could have known what the technological future held.
Senator Harkin:
No.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
And I think that the link to the Constitution and the phone tapping is a really good example. So thank you for sharing that.
Senator Harkin:
Right. Well, the next big thing is AI.
Michelle Bishop:
Right, right.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Mm-hmm.
Senator Harkin:
Now, is AI going to be accessible and adaptable for all persons with disabilities? Well, tomorrow there’s going to be a presentation by Beacon College on their use of AI for all their kids with disabilities. It’s pretty darn interesting.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Interesting.
Senator Harkin:
I had a preview of it because I visited the school. But AI could be very, very helpful. But, again, is it designed and are the algorithms that incorporate it encompassing a person with a learning disability or a physical disability, cerebral palsy or anything like that, a person with blindness or deafness or whatever? Are those algorithms going to be able to pick up on that and make sure whatever the AI you’re using or trying to use understands it has to be presented in a certain way, a certain way that’s accessible.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Fully accessible to all people. I think that that just speaks to the timelessness of the ADA too.
Senator Harkin:
You know you’re right. I got to tell you, sometimes I’m amazed at how adaptable the ADA and the language we used… I don’t know that we really thought that much about, “Oh, we’ve got to anticipate the future and this and that.” I mean, a little bit of that came around, but there was no such thing as a smartphone.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Right.
Michelle Bishop:
Right.
Senator Harkin:
There’s no such thing as smart TVs or nothing like that.
Michelle Bishop:
And if we had guessed in 1990, we probably would’ve been thinking about the flying cars from the Jetsons and not smartphones. Right? We probably would’ve gotten it wrong.
Senator Harkin:
That’s right. That’s right. But, yeah, I can’t say that we were prescient in some way. I don’t think so. I think we were just trying to nail it down as best we could.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Of course. Yeah.
Senator Harkin:
Yeah.
Jack Rosen:
I think that sort of transitions nicely. You mentioned the presentation that’s going to take place tomorrow. And obviously the fight for equality for people with disabilities didn’t end at the ADA and your work in this space hasn’t ended. So I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the Harkin International Disability Employment Summit and the work you’re doing here today?
Senator Harkin:
Well, yes, the International Disability Employment Summit, we started in 2016. I retired in 2015, January of 2015, and we had started the Harkin Institute at Drake University. And as 2015 went through… Again, I made sure when we drafted the ADA, we put in the titles that Title 1, the first one is employment because I always felt that was sort of key, jobs, employment. Well, we’d gone through all that 20 years with the Supreme Court’s decisions, 2010, it’s now 2014, and we just had not hardly made a ripple in employment. So I wanted to focus on that.
So the first summit was in December of 2016. Yes, December. Either late November, early December of 2016, and that was it. We wanted to do it internationally because we also wanted to rely on the CRPD, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for other countries. And so that was it. That was it. There’s a lot on disability rights you can focus on, and we do some of that at the institute, but I wanted this to be focused on increasing employment in competitive integrated employment for persons with disabilities. And as I said today in my opening, I said, “We laid a marker down.” At that time I said, “In 10 years, I want to double the rate of employment for specific… I mean for you. I mean, if you have a business and you employ two people with disabilities, make it a goal that in 10 years you’re going to have four people. If you’re a big company and you got 2% of your employees are people with disabilities, make it 4% in 10 years.” It’s not a heavy lift, but I wanted to keep making progress forward.
And so that’s still our goal to keep doubling the rate of employment among small businesses, against all businesses. And that’s what we’ve tried to do, to bring these… And what are the best practices? What are their hurdles? What are the problems? What are some people doing that are unique? We just had a presentation just before I came here for this podcast by Apple. I didn’t realize Apple was doing what it’s doing. It’s fantastic on how they’re getting their suppliers, not just Apple, but their suppliers to do more hiring of persons with disabilities. Wow.
See, so there’s a lot of these kind of things happening out there. And that’s what we’re focused on, employment. And we’ve had two foreign engagements. We did one in Paris, France, which was well attended by African countries and some Mideast, European. And then we did the one in Belfast, and then in 2023 we were set up to do one in Amman, Jordan. Prince Murad has been to all of our summits and he wanted to host one in Jordan, which we thought would be great. But we had to cancel it at the last minute because of problems in the Mideast and travel and things like that. So we missed in ’23 then we’re back here in ’24 and we don’t know where we’re going to be in ’25 yet. We’re looking some different places.
Michelle Bishop:
If we can trouble you with one more question.
Senator Harkin:
Yeah.
Michelle Bishop:
Well, first, I assume you use the word retirement loosely. Sounds like you’re still fairly busy.
Senator Harkin:
I am. I do, yes.
Michelle Bishop:
We’ve talked so much about the history of the disability rights movement, and I’m wondering what you think when you look towards the future, what are maybe some new challenges on the horizon as well as do you see any new disability rights champions who are ready to pick up the torch and continue this work?
Senator Harkin:
First question, there’s one thing that I’ve just been trying to get done and haven’t, it’s been a great failure and that is to get housing built in America that’s accessible. Do you realize we now have a whole industry in America, they come to see me, a whole industry that will fix up your house when you get older so you can stay at home? Why the hell didn’t we build it that way in the first place? It’s much cheaper when you do it that way.
Michelle Bishop:
Absolutely.
Senator Harkin:
I have been proposing for some time now, but I just can’t get anyone to do it, and it’s this, what is one of the biggest factors in homeownership in America? The biggest single factor, aside from price of course, the biggest single factor is the fact that you can deduct from your income taxes the interest paid on the mortgage that you have. You buy a hundred thousand dollars house, you put $10,000 down, the other $90,000 you’ve mortgaged. And what is up front? The interest. If you ever look at the diagrams, you’re paying just interest and interest and interest for years and years for 20 or a 30-year mortgage, and finally at the end you start paying on the principal. All that interest is tax-deductible. That’s a federal law.
What I’ve been advocating is that for you, for an individual, to get that tax deductibility to purchase a home, that home must meet accessibility standards. Then builders will start building houses where people will buy because if they don’t, they won’t be able to deduct their mortgage payments. So I’ve been trying to get this change made to get housing that is accessible from the very beginning, housing, apartments, condominiums. And as we know, the added expense is not that much in the beginning. It’s when you come back later and try to redo it, that’s what costs money. To me. This is one of the last great frontiers in America.
I spoke with a young woman not too long ago in Washington D.C., she’s a professional person. Told me it took her almost three years to find an apartment in D.C. that was accessible for her. She uses a wheelchair and some other devices. She just couldn’t find it. I mean, she just couldn’t find what she wanted. What do I think? The number of those were so little. You know?
Michelle Bishop:
Mm-hmm.
Senator Harkin:
Anyway, so that’s one that I just I don’t know why. And here, Biden and Kamala Harris came out, “Oh, they’re going to have all this new money. We’re going to build all this low-income housing and stuff.” Not one word about we’re going to build low-income housing and it’s going to be accessible to all people with disabilities. Nothing. Nothing. I mean, I don’t know how I get through on some of this stuff. As you can see, it just frustrates me.
Anyway, as you can see, I still think there are some barriers, a lot of barriers that we’ve got to overcome in that way. Transportation, we’re finally getting airlines… And this is a kudos to the Biden administration and to Pete Buttigieg. They finally did get some standards out for seating in airplanes for people with disabilities. Daniel Van Sant, who you’ve met here, who’s the head of our disabilities…
We’re losing Bob Casey. But, yes, there are Maggie Hassan, Senator Maggie Hassan, Tammy Duckworth from Illinois. Those are two big champions right there.
Michelle Bishop:
Senator, you gave us so much of your time today, we appreciate it.
Jack Rosen:
Thank you so much.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Thank you so much.
Senator Harkin:
I forgot, I got to get my rear end out of here.
Speaker 5:
That’s why I’m here.
Michelle Bishop:
You gave us so much of your time, we appreciate it so much.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
No, it’s totally fine. Thank you so much, Senator.
Senator Harkin:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. See you, bye.
Jack Rosen:
Thank you, Jack.
Speaker 5:
Your dog is beautiful.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Thank you.
Jack Rosen:
Wow, that was so cool. I cannot believe we got to speak with Senator Harkin. I cannot believe we got to speak with him for that long. I’m not even sure what to say. It’s so exciting that we got to speak with him and hear about what it was like as a legislator while these fights were going on to pass the ADA, and to just learn a bit more history about it wasn’t… As much as we focus on the ADA, there is other legislation that is that people are always… We often hear, “Isn’t that an ADA violation?” Sometimes it is, but as he pointed out, sometimes there are other disability rights laws that are protecting people.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Right? I mean, honestly, all I can say really is… Sorry. No, Jack. I could not agree more. It was an incredibly moving interview. He is incredibly down to earth, and I genuinely am so grateful for the time that he gave us. And he’s just such a down to earth guy. I really enjoyed talking with him and learning the history and just hearing his perspective on everything going on, ways that we can improve the ADA today and just in general the advocacy that it took on both sides to make the ADA what it is.
Michelle Bishop:
Truly. Senator Harkin, thank you so much for letting us crash the Harkin Institute this year, for all the time you’re willing to sit down and talk with us about your achievements, for everything you’ve done for the disability rights movement, and most of all for laughing at all of our bad jokes.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Yes. And speaking of jokes…
Michelle Bishop:
Oh, we know you have one, Stephanie.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Yes, I do. And it’s actually kind of on theme for this episode, so I’m kind of proud of myself. Anyway, what did the ramp say to the stairs?
Jack Rosen:
What did the ramp say to the stairs?
Michelle Bishop:
What did the ramp say to the stairs?
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
I don’t know, but you guys have to guess. I do know, but…
Michelle Bishop:
We had one easy one recently.
Jack Rosen:
Right? I think I got it.
Michelle Bishop:
Go on.
Jack Rosen:
I’ve got you covered.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Nope, that’s a good one, but no.
Michelle Bishop:
That’s a good answer. Okay. What is it?
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Step aside. Get it?
Michelle Bishop:
Oh, yeah. No, I got it.
Jack Rosen:
Hey, that’s an appropriate one.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
It really is though. I was so proud of it.
Michelle Bishop:
It was. That is a great joke for the anniversary of the ADA, and I hope that Senator Harkin is laughing at that one very hard.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
I feel like he would.
Michelle Bishop:
Unlike me and Jack. Thank you everyone for joining us for our series on the anniversary of the ADA. We were really excited for the ADA’s birthday this year, and it was amazing to get the opportunity to talk to several people who were just instrumental in the drafting and the passage of the ADA who shared their experiences with us and talked about the future of the movement. We appreciate it so much. Jack, tell the people where they can find us on social media.
Jack Rosen:
You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, Threads. I’m forgetting one, aren’t I? Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, Threads. Oh, yeah, we also have a YouTube channel, follow us there.
Michelle Bishop:
Not TikTok.
Jack Rosen:
Not TikTok.
Michelle Bishop:
Okay, got it.
Jack Rosen:
And as always, you can email us at [email protected]. Until next time folks.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Bye.
