Critical Agenda

Medicaid

Medicaid is a lifeline for most people with significant disabilities. It is overwhelmingly the largest funding source of both long term supports and health care for most of our constituents. State budget crises and actions by the federal government have caused many states to make drastic reductions in their Medicaid programs, resulting in devastating effects on people with disabilities, families, and communities.

•  Ensure that Medicaid fully meets the health and long term care needs of all eligible children and adults with disabilities.
   
• Continue to provide a significant temporary increase in the federal share of Medicaid spending (known as federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP)) to address the economic crises facing most states and ensure that states maintain their level of effort.
   
• Continue to shift the major focus of Medicaid long term services and supports from institutional to community services and encourage the states to use the new Community First Choice Option to expand community-based services.
   
• Improve and expand home and community-based services by making such services mandatory.
   
• Expand the ability of consumers and families to exercise control over individualized Medicaid funding.

Read more about our Legislative Agenda for Medicaid

Health Care

• Protect the individual entitlement to Medicare and Medicaid.
• Ensure that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is not fully or partially repealed. The ACA contains many critical reforms that will benefit people with disabilities. 
• Ensure that the ACA is fully funded and well implemented in order to fulfill the promise of expanded coverage, nondiscrimination in health insurance, increased prevention and other important provisions.      
• Expand training of health care providers to provide appropriate care to people with disabilities.
• Reauthorize the Combating Autism Act and support legislation to develop evidence-based services and supports for individuals on the autism spectrum. 

Read more about our Legislative Agenda for Health Care.
 

Long Term Services and Supports

• Ensure that the new Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) long term insurance plan is fully developed and put into place so that workers can pay premiums and be fully covered (without impoverishing themselves for Medicaid eligibility) in the event they need long term services and supports.

Read more about our Legislative Agenda for Long Term Services and Supports
 

Social Security

• Protect current and future Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) beneficiaries and reject proposals to reduce benefits through reductions to the formula, cost-of-living adjustments, or other changes that result in lower benefits.
• Ensure adequate funds for the Social Security Administration to meet the needs of the public, including eliminating the backlog in hearings for applicants with disabilities.
• Improve work incentives for people with disabilities; increase the Substantial Gainful Activity (SGA) level to the level used for people who are blind; and substantially increase the resource limit for SSI and annually index it for inflation.
• Eliminate marriage penalties.

Read more about our Legislative Agenda for Social Security.
 

Education

• Fully fund each component of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as No Child Left Behind), and relevant components of the Higher Education Act.
• Assure that the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act appropriately covers all students with disabilities.
• Amend IDEA to place the burden of proof on school systems under the due process provision and to allow courts to award fees to expert witnesses who are not attorneys.
   

Read more about our Legislative Agenda for Education.

Direct Support Workers

• Ensure funding so that workers who provide direct supports to people with disabilities are well trained and paid living wages and receive benefits.
• Require states to address the low wages and reimbursement rates that contribute to the direct support worker shortage.
   

Read more about our Legislative Agenda for Direct Support Workers.

Employment

• Improve employment related services to people with disabilities by reauthorizing the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) and the Rehabilitation Act, increasing funding for these critical workforce development, supported employment and vocational rehabilitation programs, and ensuring that people with disabilities are included in any new employment initiative.

Read more about our Legislative Agenda for Employment, Training, and Wages.

Family Supports

• Strengthen the capacity of states to assist families in maintaining typical lifestyles for themselves and their family member(s) with disabilities and address their unmet needs by establishing separate federal funding for family supports.

Read more about our Legislative Agenda for Family Support.
 

Housing

• Increase funding for Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers, Section 811 Supportive Housing for Persons with Disabilities, and other federal housing programs to increase the availability of affordable and accessible housing for people with disabilities.
• Enact reforms, such as provisions requiring the use of other sources of federal, state and local funding for housing production, to the Section 811 Supportive Housing for Persons with Disabilities program.
   

Read more about our Legislative Agenda for Housing.

Transportation

• Support and expand accessible and affordable transportation options for people with disabilities.

Read more about our Legislative Agenda on Transportation.