McCain & Palin are shamelessly pandering to the special needs community- the FACTS

At last week's RNC, John McCain talked about a family with a child with autism and said he would work for them.

Sarah Palin said that families of children with special needs would have a "friend and an advocate" in the White House is she is elected.

I found a great article in the NYT that gives what I see as a very fair assessment of the candidates' promises as compared to their actual records.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/us/politics/07needs.html

Some highlights:

<snip>

To those in Alaska who work with children with special needs, Ms. Palin’s pronouncement was surprising; the disabled have not been a centerpiece of Ms. Palin’s 20-months in office or any of her campaigns for office.

THE FACTS:

The state of Alaska is being sued in 2 separate lawsuits for inadequate services and financing for children with special needs, particularly those with autism.

As governor, Palin cut funding for the Special Olympics in half.

While Palin is sure to point to legislation that she has signed that does increase funding for special education, she played no role in the crafting of the legislation, she merely has signed the legislation. Still in a state with a budget surplus of $5 billion, services for children and adults with disabilities are still inadequate.

The article also goes on to point out that McCain himself has not acted consistently with his and Palin's words:

<snip>

The central concern of many parents with children who have special needs is the financing to fulfill the decades-old federal mandate requiring public schools to offer educational services to their children — or pay for them in nonpublic school settings.

The law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, passed in 1975 with bipartisan support, called for the federal government to pick up 40 percent of the state cost of teaching children with special needs. The federal government pays less than half that, though more under the Bush administration than under President Clinton.

Mr. McCain voted to reauthorize the law, but voted against a measure, with nearly every other member of his party, to increase financing through a reduction in tax cuts for the wealthy. Mr. McCain has been a proponent of school vouchers, denounced by many advocates for children with special needs as draining public money away from special education programs; Ms. Palin is a school-choice advocate, her spokeswoman said.

Additionally, despite his protestations, McCain has alligned himself more and more closely with the Bush White House as is evidenced by his voting record. So let's look at the Bush 2009 budget and see how he treated people with disbilities:

The president’s budget provides no new funding for the Combating Autism Act, and level-funds or cuts many important autism and disability-related programs. Specifically, the Administration’s budget provides only $16.1 million for the CDC’s autism program - a 0.5 percent cut from last year, and almost $2 million less than the amount recommended under the Combating Autism Act. The budget also provides no new increases for autism research at the National Institutes of Health or autism programs at the Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration.

The proposed budget also calls for the elimination of the Supported Employment State Grant program, cuts funding for the Office of Disability and Employment Policy by more than half, reduces programs for supported housing for people with disabilities by 30 percent, and proposes more than $17.3 billion in cuts to Medicaid, most of which will be shifted to the states.

The president’s plan increases IDEA funding by $337 million; however, the proposed level of $11.3 billion is $10.2 billion short of the amount called for by the authorizing legislation enacted in 2004. The Institute of Education Sciences funding for special education studies and evaluations was cut from $11 million to $9 million.

http://www.autism-society.org/site/News2?id=10648&page=NewsArticle

So now we are being told how McCain/ Palin will work for children and adults with special needs.

HOW STUPID DO THEY THINK WE ARE?

Her son is still an infant and has a lifetime of challenges ahead. Palin also has the money and the influence to ensure that her son will have the very BEST of services and supports. Sadly, that is not the case for millions of children with special needs. There's too little money for services and programs and too little support for children and adults with special needs.

FUCK McCain.
FUCK Palin.