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Congress? The budget? What’s the whole deal there? You asked, we brought someone on who answered! NDRN’s Deputy Executive Director for Public Policy Eric Buehlmann came on the podcast to explain what’s going on with the budget and how it impacts the funding NDRN and the Protection and Advocacy network receives.
Full Transcript Available at: https://www.ndrn.org/resource/ndr-may25/
Tell Congress to Protect our Programs: https://secure.everyaction.com/I6avR5LSvUamWdNZNIgMew2
Jack Rosen:
And Michelle, do you want to kick us off?
Michelle Bishop:
Are we recording? I’m totally sending a text message. Okay. Okay, I’m ready.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Well, now we have our whole… Blah. Now we have our cold open.
Michelle Bishop:
Of course we do work on these. We somehow put out an episode every month. Okay. Wait, wait, wait. Are we doing the opening for the whole episode or are we just getting our conversation with Eric started?
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
I thought we were doing the conversation with… Wait, I don’t care.
Jack Rosen:
I guess just with Eric. If we have time at the end, we’ll do an open and close, but here, I think I can-
Michelle Bishop:
I know, but I don’t know how to frame what this conversation is. It might be-
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Like spilling the tea on all things. I don’t know.
Jack Rosen:
That will be the podcast title, but-
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
I love that.
Michelle Bishop:
Thank you.
Jack Rosen:
Just ask me who our guest is today and I think I can take it from there.
Michelle Bishop:
Okay, deal.
*Intro Music Plays*
Jack, tell the people who our guest is this month.
Jack Rosen:
So today, we have on Eric Buehlmann, NDRN’s director of public policy and Stephanie’s boss. He is here today to… Folks have a lot of questions about what’s going on with our funding. We’ve seen a lot in the news about proposed cuts to various programs that the P&A network supports, and folks within and throughout the network have a lot of questions about what’s going on right now. So we’re bringing in Eric Buehlmann, NDRN’s director of public policy, congressional insider, and expert on all things budgetary.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
And fierce leader of the public policy duo here at NDRN, so yeah, Eric, if you want to spill some tea.
Eric Buehlmann:
Thanks for inviting me on today. So I feel overwhelmed by the introduction in terms of being a congressional expert on the budget, but it is a very confusing and hidden process in a lot of respects, but also very scary because as you all well know, our members, the protection and advocacy and client assistance programs depend on the federal funding to provide the great advocacy work they’re doing. I guess from the beginning, the president is supposed to propose a budget, and we haven’t really seen a full budget yet proposed. We have seen some things leaked which were very devastating to our network in terms of getting rid of what I call the mothership program or defunding the mothership program, the Protection and Advocacy for Developmental and Disabilities program, but also in the same breath, the voting program, and then also severely curtailing the mental illness program, PAMI.
So that leaked budget was very scary, but is also one of those steps that most people don’t ever see. It usually takes place the year before, so in this case, this would have taken place in 2024. That kind of discussion between the Office of Management and Budget and the agency, Health and Human Services would have taken place. But because we have a new president that came in, those discussions were taking place earlier in 2025, but that’s also just one step.
So the agency does get to push back on any proposal that they get from the Office of Management of Budget, and our understanding is that there was some pushback. We don’t know exactly what that pushback is, but that could mean that there aren’t defunding those programs. It could mean reductions in the amounts of cuts that existed. It could mean anything.
Most recently, the president released what’s called a skinny budget, and that is usually what happens when a new administration, a new president comes in, because they haven’t been working on it for the last eight, 10 months. It’s hard to produce a 1,200-page document, 1,200 pages plus that the president’s budget usually is, so you get what’s called a skinny budget, which just has top line numbers. You can see the problems that may exist in those top line numbers with huge reductions in what they released in what’s called discretionary funding. That’s what’s done by Congress, and especially the non-defense side, which is where all our funding is. But you can see by just the sheer fact of a 23% reduction, which is just a massive reduction in that kind of funding, that that probably has a negative impact on our programs, but it doesn’t get down to the detail of those kinds of levels in terms of being able to know what the impact is on every single program. So we know this giant bad number out there, but we don’t know what that specifically means for our individual programs.
We may later this summer. They may release a full budget. They don’t have to, but they may release a full budget at that point and then we’ll know what these implications mean, but again, that’s just another step in the process. Then comes the work of getting Congress to pass the appropriations bills, and that’s their job. They’re supposed to fund these programs and make the decisions. Ultimately, it’s not the president that makes those decisions. It’s Congress that has that authority to decide what the appropriations are going to be, and that’s where our work needs to be, is making sure that Congress understands the importance of all of our programs and that they’re out there and that they do wonderful work and that they need to be funded, not only just funded at the same level. They need to actually have increased funding so that we can do more and more work that we really need to do and that we know is out there.
And so that’s really where our focus is right now, is making sure that Congress gets the important work of our members and our work and the work you guys are doing. And so therefore, we’re making the case to Congress and then hopefully over the next couple of months as Congress begins to consider these bills and decides what their funding priorities are going to be, that they may be. I would be surprised. I think right now, we go for level funding is a great win given what we’ve seen out there for numbers and that hopefully we can maybe get an increase here or there, but that’s where our focus is right now, is making sure that Congress understands and that over the next couple of months, that they will fund our programs. I will stop talking for a second.
Michelle Bishop:
Eric, I heard you mention PAD program and PAMI program. Did you mention that Pavo was also zero allocation in that budget?
Eric Buehlmann:
I thought I did.
Michelle Bishop:
I hope so. I was going to say, “Eric, I’m right here.”
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Yes.
Michelle Bishop:
I’m right here.
Eric Buehlmann:
I said the voting program.
Michelle Bishop:
Oh, okay. You did say, yeah. I just missed it. I was getting ready to come out swinging, guys, because-
Jack Rosen:
No, he did. He also acknowledged that they’re trying to zero out the program that funds all the work our PAVA folks do, including-
Michelle Bishop:
Okay. My bad. My bad. Sorry, Eric. We’ve been friends too long for this to be the rift between us. I did also have a legitimate question. I know there’s been a lot of talk in the last couple of months about federal grants and contracts. We’ve seen attempts to freeze all of the grants. We are hearing that contracts have gotten canceled. Can you give, for people who don’t live in this world all the time, a breakdown of what is the difference between a federal grant and a federal contract, and what does it actually take to alter them or eliminate them?
Eric Buehlmann:
You’ve raised another important issue, which is a lot of our members are still waiting for their ’25 funding, and hopefully that’s going to happen over the next couple of weeks. Even though Congress finished out what is the current fiscal year, fiscal year 2025 back in March, they haven’t released all the funding, so our members have been suffering through trying to keep doing their work and tapping their reserves and things like that. And hopefully, that funding’s going to be released in the next couple of weeks so that you know how much money you’re going to be getting. That will run through September 30th and you can continue doing the work you’re doing.
Really, the difference between grants and contracts comes down to, in my mind, whether this is something that is required. Required is a tough word because that to me usually means an entitlement, but our funding is what’s considered to be a formula grant, and you get the amount of money, you run the formulas and then people get a certain amount of money. So you’re required to send that money out under the formula, and that’s usually a grant.
If the federal government’s trying to get something like some research or I use widgets or $60 million airplanes that will drop into the Red Sea, then those are usually contracts, and so that is just something not required by the law to go do, but that they seek the services from someone else to do those kinds of activities. So our members get grants because it’s just a formula, but if you’re doing research for the federal government or, as I said, producing widgets, then you’ll get a contract from the federal government. And I think the contracts at times can be a little tougher to cancel because there’s usually terms and conditions in them, but they’re going about doing it, and you have to figure out how you’re going to enforce what the contract said at that point.
Jack Rosen:
So since you mentioned the difference between grants and contracts, we should note that they are proposing in theory a new type of grant to replace some of the funding, but there’s a reason we’re not quite happy with that solution. Can you explain a bit how these block grants they’re proposing?
Eric Buehlmann:
Well, it’s an extremely… And this is where there’s a lot of confusion. Well, there’s a lot of confusion that’s been sown by this leaked document. It’s hard to understand exactly what they’re doing and what they’re proposing, but one way of looking at what they’ve done is to cut all these programs, but then through what is a set of money that goes to the states for independent living activities, and then the state would get to divvy up this bigger pot of money amongst potentially the programs that they’ve gotten rid of, or they can just… It’s up to the state to decide. So what a block grant means at base level is we’re going to give the state this big pot of money and then leave it up to the state to decide how they’re going to spend it. And so here, what they did is they said, we’re going to get rid of all these programs, but then we’re going to through this weird little, not little, but state grant that they have, we’re going to give you a bigger amount of money under this and then let the state decide.
I think the big concern we have for our network is the rationale and why the protection and advocacy agencies were created was the states weren’t doing their job of overseeing the services and supports and the activities that were occurring in state institutions and through state funding and a variety of other things. Why would the state willingly spend money to get someone that’s going to be overseeing the work that they’re doing? That’s why Congress stepped in.
Congress stepped in because they were like, “We need some independent entity to provide this oversight over the states,” who have clearly shown that they can’t do this and won’t do this. And we know they won’t do it because it’s against their self-interest to do it, and now we’re going to give them this block grant and say, “Okay, use this money to create this entity again that would provide oversight and point out the bad things you’re doing.” States aren’t going to do that. A majority of the states aren’t going to do that. So it’s really a myth that this is the same level of funding and would be the same thing and the states could decide to do it or not. Again, Congress created the protection and advocacy system because the states failed at it, and over the 50-ish years, they haven’t shown that they’ve gotten any better.
Michelle Bishop:
Eric-
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
I know. Oh, I’m sorry, Michelle, go ahead.
Michelle Bishop:
Okay, mine’s quick. Eric, one of the I guess key phrases we hear in all of this is the idea of eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. But from what I hear you saying, the money that goes to the P&A network is an investment in preventing things like waste, fraud, and abuse. The P&As are essentially like a watchdog to ensure that policies and money are being used appropriately.
Eric Buehlmann:
Yes, and everybody’s definition of waste, fraud and abuse depends on the way they look at it. I would argue that some people view the Medicaid program in its entirety as waste, fraud and abuse. And so when they say, “Oh, all we’re doing is cutting waste, fraud and abuse,” in their mind, the whole program is, and so therefore, they want to get rid of the whole program. I would wholeheartedly agree with your description of what our members do, which is they’re out there finding this waste, fraud and abuse, and making sure that it isn’t continuing. And so by cutting us, it seems counterproductive to their whole argument that it’s waste, fraud and abuse.
But if you define waste, fraud and abuse, in your definition, it’s holding states accountable and making sure that they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing and making sure that the lovely states are doing their job, well, then if that’s your definition of waste, fraud and abuse, then yes, you are cutting waste, fraud and abuse. That’s me being cynical.
Michelle Bishop:
Well, these are cynical times. There’s so much going on. Every day is a different adventure. It’s hard to keep up. Thank you.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Every hour is a different adventure, let’s be honest, at this point. But yeah, Eric, a lot of our listeners are hearing these things, and so I just wanted to know, what can folks do on the ground level, on the state level to help with for getting these funds allocated? Could you talk about the advocacy that folks could potentially take part in to talk with their legislators? Is that something that you feel could be potentially helpful? I know obviously what we’re seeing right now is a lot coming from the executive branch, but of course, we’re going to be seeing proposals coming forth from the legislative side of things as well. So would love if you could talk a little bit about how folks could potentially get involved and try to of course work to make a difference in these efforts, if there’s anything that folks can do.
Michelle Bishop:
Eric, if I could add to that really quickly too, because I think that’s probably the most important question we can ask today. Some of our listeners are actual staff at P&As who might have a bit of a background in some of this or be talking about what they can do, but some of our listeners are like my mom, and what can she do if she wants to get involved in support?
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Carol is fabulous, by the way. Okay.
Eric Buehlmann:
I think there’s a multi-pronged strategy here. I think one of the beauties of the protection and advocacy network and the reporting that they do is you guys have a ton of amazing stories of all the great work and activities you’ve done, but I think it’s sometimes a little bit hidden. So I think there’s a communication strategy that needs to be occurring, and making sure through social media, through the mainstream press, through those kinds of things, that these stories are getting out. And that I think in addition to the P&A network singing their own tune, I think it’s important that the great work that you’re doing and that your individuals that you’re helping, the people with disabilities that you’re helping, the families that you’re helping, that they’re willing to tell their story too and describe the importance of the work that’s being done.
So I think there’s a communications aspect to it, and then I think the second part is that these stories need to be brought either through the communication sphere, but also brought directly to the legislators and make them understand, both at your state and local level because then they can advocate at the federal level and say, “Look, this is a great entity. This is the importance of this.” And I think that that plays out a lot with the voting program, which is working with your state and local elections officials how you’ve made the voting system more accessible, made it better, done trainings, those kinds of things. Those are things that they can sell to the federal level. But I also think we need to be reaching out to our federal legislators and saying, “Here’s the importance of the network. This is what they’re doing and this is why they need to continue to be funded,” and that their funding needs to be increased.
So I think you need to have a communication strategy and making sure that there is a groundswell of support, because you will be surprised how often legislators actually pay attention to what their local news is saying. And so having news stories, letters to the editors, those kinds of things are important, or social media.
And then filling out, I think the last thing I’d say is we’re trying to do a ton of action alerts through here at the National Disability Rights Network. I know some individual protection and advocacy agencies are doing the same, is filling those out. Let me say it this way also, not using your staff email, using your private emails, but also sharing those far and wide. And then joining together with the other entities both in the aging and the disability world that are being attacked by this administration in terms of budget cuts, and saying how we really need to be working together and it’s important that we have a strong system of aging and disability systems, and just making that case to the federal legislators.
Michelle Bishop:
What I hear you saying is that Jack should be making TikToks.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Is that really all you got from this? Eric is giving this explanation of making sure that we’re looking at multiple media sources, and Michelle’s like, “TikTok, TikTok. TikTok on the TikToks.” Oh my gosh, that’s too funny.
Michelle Bishop:
Just trying to take an opportunity to bait Jack into an argument about TikTok, but he didn’t take the bait.
Eric Buehlmann:
Well, I know Stephanie makes TikToks.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
I do, yeah.
Michelle Bishop:
Stephanie is a TikToker. She is an influencer. Yes, yes.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
I pretend.
Eric Buehlmann:
Is Stephanie truly the influencer or is Nala the influencer?
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Nala is definitely the influencer. They want to see cute videos of Nala swimming around. They do not care about the stories I have to tell about the fact that I had a legally blind Uber driver the other day. That’s another story for another episode.
Eric Buehlmann:
Or for our two o’clock discussion.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
I’ll be sure to tell you a two.
Eric Buehlmann:
But the problem at times that I think the network has is that they don’t always… It’s the small wins that really make the biggest difference, and those can be the hardest things to get people’s attention and/or the press. And that’s where I think thinking outside the box on a communication strategy is important, because those are the stories that I think are pretty amazing. And I think they get lost sometimes because there’s just no outlet to convey all these amazing things that you’re doing on every single day.
The big abuse reports that are being done, the monitoring that’s being done, those reports that come from that, they’re huge and those are the things that’ll get the TV and the mainstream press ideas. But it’s those daily activities you’re doing, be it the IEP meeting, be it helping the person navigate to get registered, those kinds of smaller things that end up in the program performance reports but the general public doesn’t know about. And I think that’s really where there’s a gap in the work and in the communications that is done and really much more needs to be conveying those, and that’s where I think getting the client buying in and being able to talk about these kinds of things is really important. Or provide just a quote that the P&A can use in a press… Not so much a press release, but in a one-page document showing the importance of what this work is or in the communications with their legislators.
I was The Hill with one of our executive directors a couple of weeks ago, it’s only been a couple of weeks, yeah, and she had a great quote from a client assistance program client, and I thought it was wonderful and I think it’s a good way. It wasn’t the biggest, most intensive thing that you had to do in terms of the work, but the client was very happy and very excited about the outcome, and so gave a great quote. And I think those are the kinds of small wins that we need to be putting out there more into the communication sphere, because you start to add up all these small wins and people begin to hear about it more and they begin to understand that there’s more than just the giant class action litigation or the giant abuse and neglect report from the institution. So I think getting that kind of information out to the world is critically important.
Michelle Bishop:
Eric, you talked a lot about P&As and the work that they do flying under the radar, which I think is so true. And I think sometimes when people hear about cuts to government spending, it sounds like a good thing. Oh, we’re saving money. Everyone would love to cut their budget down. And it strikes me in the case of the P&A’s that when you hear those cuts, what people don’t understand is that P&A’s every day are helping protect people with disabilities from physical abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse, all types of atrocities, and that if that’s not there, there will be dire consequences for real everyday people with disabilities.
Eric Buehlmann:
And I think we have a base misunderstanding of what the government does at so many different levels. And you’re right, I think this is a meat ax on a lot of these things, is we’ll do these giant cuts and we’re doing a great job, but in the long run, what you’ve ended up doing is creating a system that is probably going to cost you more in the long run, and at the same time, leaving behind a trail of abused, neglected, financially exploited people with disabilities.
And again, going back to positive changes for people with disabilities are not just for people with disabilities. It ends up being something that impacts the entire society. The example we all use is curb cuts, and curb cuts are critically important for people in wheelchairs to be able to navigate around. Well, talk to your family with a stroller or talk to the person with big heavy luggage rolling things around, trying to lift it up onto a curb. No, thank you. I’d rather just roll it onto the curb. Same thing with level boarding into trains or trains that are more accessible. You’re making it easier for just a broader population than people with disabilities. And so ultimately, these kinds of massive cuts are just going to harm society more than they’re going to be beneficial at all.
Michelle Bishop:
I think that’s so true that it costs more in the end, because we know it’s much more expensive when people end up in any type of institutional setting. Whether or not that’s a nursing home, a residential facility, a jail, or a prison, that’s much more expensive than supporting people in the community. So we can invest a little bit of money into people with disabilities being able to have independent lives in the community, save in much more expensive ways of supporting people with disabilities, and as a bonus, the people with disabilities that are living in the community, they’re working. They’re paying rent or a mortgage, they’re paying taxes, they are spending dollars at small businesses, they’re actually boosting the economy at the same time. To me, it’s like this win-win where we spend less upfront and we make more money on the back end.
Eric Buehlmann:
I completely agree. That’s the best way to make… But in addition, you also get the connection still between the people and their families and the people and their community, which you can’t quantify. And unfortunately, many legislators want to be able to quantify everything and say if we’re spending this dollar, what are we getting back in return? And that’s one of the difficult things about the work our members do at times, is that there really isn’t a dollar amount to the quantification of being able to maintain the family unit and being able to maintain as part of yourself as a community, and those are critically important. And that’s where sometimes you get some pushback from some people, and you need to have someone understand the importance of the family unit still being together or the individual being part of the greater community and what that means to everybody. But you’re right on the monetary side.
Michelle Bishop:
Absolutely. Things that are easier to take for granted when they haven’t been challenged in your own life the way they are for people with disabilities. I think sometimes we overlook the benefit to the individuals, to the families, to the communities if you haven’t had that lived experience of a family being separated, of being a person with a disability who hasn’t been given the dignity of independent community living and work when that’s something that you’re perfectly capable of.
Eric Buehlmann:
And that’s also becoming… I think we have grown up in a society, even me, the oldest of the group here has grown up in a society where people with disabilities have been more included than they were in prior generations, and I think there’s a large segment of the world that has forgotten what it was like before. You go back to before the Rehab Act or you go back before what was first called the Education of the Handicapped Act, which is now Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and definitely the Americans With Disabilities Act. But we have a whole generation of people that don’t remember what society was like at that time and the problems and the issues that arose, and so I think they have forgotten that this is an issue that still needs to be addressed. They assume that we have achieved, I guess I’ll say Nirvana in this topic, and there’s just so much work to do still, but if we stop doing the work, we’re going to backslide into what we were before these laws passed.
And that’s a situation we can’t go back into, and we need to explain to them that this is where we were. We know you didn’t know it, but this is where we were, and if we don’t have these entities out there, this is what we’re going to go back to. So you’ve got to explain and you’ve got to show those, as much as there’s a lot of language that needs to be changed, the Geraldo Rivera exposés of Willowbrook and otherwise show what the world was like and what we could potentially go back to, and that’s what we don’t need to be going back to.
And so you look at the really bad examples that came out from the creation of the PAMI program and why Congress decided that there needed to be a program focused specifically on mental illness was those abuse and neglect investigations into psychiatric facilities. And if we don’t have the P&A network out there, this is where we’re going to end up back in that world. But a lot of people have never seen that world so they don’t understand it, and we really need to hit them in the face with it.
Jack Rosen:
I think that is an important point, Eric. There’s a reason you’re calling PAD and PAMI the mothership programs, because at the end of the day, what the network was started to do was protect the members of our community who are most at risk, and that is the people who are in institutional settings, where their family maybe is checking in on them but they’re not there all the time. They have, in some cases, limited ability to communicate with the outside world. And I think you’re hitting on something important, that people, when we talk about the bad old days, it’s not, oh, the facilities were a little worse and they weren’t where they are now, or it’s not the network coming in to tell you, “Oh, we disagree with placing your family member in this facility. We think they need to be at this one that’s just a little better and it’s more expensive, and that’s what we feel.”
We’re not here to meddle in people’s lives or we are not doing this frankly for fun. When we talk about the bad old days, people need to watch Willowbrook, because the footage you’re seeing, it is disturbing. It looks like, I hope I can say this on the podcast, as someone who’s Jewish, it reminds me of footage from some very ugly times in our past. These people were malnourished, they were missing teeth. They were sitting in their own waste in these facilities, not getting better but getting worse because they were being abused, they were being neglected, they were not being fed. Sometimes they were being physically hurt by the staff. And I think folks need to realize, when we talk about the bad old days, it is not like, “Oh, it used to be different.” It is something we cannot accept going back to, and that is why we need folks from across the network and all of you listening at home, we need you to explain to your members of Congress why it’s important to you that these programs are protected.
Eric Buehlmann:
And we still see these examples occurring today. There have been multiple stories, some very recent and some over the last couple of years, of little fight clubs at institutions where the staff will put people with disabilities against each other and place bets and do those kinds of things. So it’s not that these events are still not occurring. It’s not in the same sphere as the Willowbrook, because what they’ll now do is they’ll take you around a nice shiny looking facility and institution and say, “Hey, look, it looks a lot better compared to what Willowbrook is.” Yeah, it does. It looks shinier, but the same problem still exist and the underlying problems.
And the community is not always perfect, but what that means is rather than going to see, let’s say in the case of Willowbrook, 6,000 people in one place, if you’ve got group homes of, I can’t do that math so I’ll do it at 10, group homes of 10 people, that’s 600 places you need to go. Well, 600 is a heck of a lot harder to get to than one, so you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got the resources and the ability to get to all these places and be able to get around, but the events are still occurring. There are plenty of examples out there. They may look shiny and new but the underlying problems still exist, and so the network is desperately needed to make sure that those events don’t occur and that, as you said, Jack, we don’t go back.
Jack Rosen:
In some ways, it sounds like what we need is more funding, not less, because we need people out there investigating these thousands of facilities. The network is doing everything they can right now, but it’s up to Congress to fully fund our investigative capacities so that we can prevent it at all of these facilities.
Eric Buehlmann:
From your mouth to God’s ear, or the appropriators ear in this case.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Absolutely. Well, thank you so, so much, Eric, for being on this episode and giving us more of a view in lay terms of everything that’s going on. And yeah, we will definitely include links for folks in the show notes of various things that we’ve discussed today. And yeah, thank you again so, so much. We really appreciate it, and we’re glad to have you on as a first time guest.
Eric Buehlmann:
Well, thank you. I appreciate it. And let me with just a thank you to all the Protection and Advocacy and Client Assistance Program staff that are out there. I’ve been with NDRN for a little over 18 years, and part of the reason I came and part of the reason I’ve stayed is the work everyone’s doing day to day on the ground level, making the lives of people with disabilities better. I think you can sell yourself a little short on the amount of work you’re doing and the amount of good you’re doing, but I think it’s important that someone’s out there doing this work and that we’re here trying to protect you as best we can.
Michelle Bishop:
And we want to thank you, Eric, for all the work that you have done every day for years now to help protect the P&A programs and people with disabilities. It doesn’t go unnoticed. Willowbrook came up a couple of times, so I wanted to mention, as Stephanie said, we can include some links in the show notes. The Geraldo exposé of Willowbrook is available to watch online for free. For folks who have not seen it, it is as bad as it sounds. It was notably actually Ryan Murphy’s inspiration for writing the asylum season of American Horror Story, which is actually the scariest season of a show called American Horror Story and it’s not even the season that has clowns in it. That’s how bad Willowbrook is. I wanted to add one last thought to all this, because we talked a lot about the consequences of cutting programs like PAT and PAMI, and it’s not lost on me that when there are proposed cuts to the mothership programs, there’s a proposed elimination of the PAVA program. It would prevent people with disabilities from voting to protect the programs that protect their rights.
Eric Buehlmann:
Thanks guys. I appreciated the opportunity.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Eric, that was-
Michelle Bishop:
Thank you.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Yeah, that was amazing. Thank you.
Jack Rosen:
So Stephanie, I guess I’ll ask, since Michelle isn’t here, and I’ll try to do the best and be a tough critic like Michelle can be. Do you have a joke for us?
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
That’s kind of hard because I know that you really like my jokes, so anyway. Not to get too terribly off the rails on this… I know, I know. I do a lot of train puns, what have you, on the struggle train. Anyway, not to get too off the rails, but I wanted to let folks know that we are, in case you don’t know, having our annual conference taking place the first week of June. Super exciting. And why do I say that? Because we’re going to have lots of premier trainings for folks to attend. Workshops, sessions, there’s one on public policy and social media hosted by yours truly, and our pro-host will also be presenting, so couldn’t help but give that a shout out. But yeah, if you are interested in coming to our annual conference, it is going to be held virtual. We’ll put the registration link in the show notes for those who may not be registered yet. So yeah, that was my lame attempt at a joke this month, and I promise they’ll get better soon.
Jack Rosen:
The jokes will get back on track.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Yes, right. Exactly. See, Jack’s getting it. Jack has the joke this time. I love it. All aboard. Man, we conducted that really well. Anyway.
Jack Rosen:
All right, I’m ending this podcast. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky, Threads, LinkedIn. If you can find our TikTok account, you can follow us there.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Also, tell us what the handle is because I think we forgot.
Jack Rosen:
Let us know, and you can let us know at [email protected]. Until next time, folks.
Stephanie Flynt McEben:
Bye. Choo-choo.
