Early in the morning of December 2, the Senate passed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act by a vote of 51-49. It is different than the bill passed by the House, so the House must now vote on the bill. Alternatively, the House and Senate can send members to a conference committee, who will produce a compromise bill, on which both the House and Senate will vote. See more on the differences from the Washington Post.
The bill has been opposed by many disability groups. The Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities has outlined the Top 5 Reasons the Tax Cut and Jobs Act is Bad for People with Disabilities. The bill includes:
- Repeal of the Disabled Access Credit, that assists small businesses to improve their accessibility
- Repeal of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which incentivizes employers to hire people with disabilities
- Repeal of the Medical Expense Deduction, which offsets the cost of high out-of-pocket medical bills
- Repeal of the “Individual Mandate” for health insurance coverage, a key provision to ensuring that everyone has access to health coverage, including people with pre-existing conditions.
- Result in automatic cuts to Medicare, due to the fact that Congress did not offset the reduction in tax revenue
Several organizations, including The Arc, American Network of Community Options and Resources, and Autistic Self-Advocacy Network have developed resources to help advocates take action to stop the bill before it reaches the President’s desk. Advocates on Twitter are using #TaxOnDisability to organize around the issue.
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There is absolutely nothing good about this bill if you are not a billionaire or a corporation!
I have a pre-existing condition a traumatic brain injury that my dad gave me at 5 months old and I did when I first got out on my own try at age 21 working for 3 years and I work 2 days a week for four hours a day and that wouldn’t even cover what my rent is right now but because of the stress of having to work with the coworkers because the lack of social skills because I could not pick up on social cues that I never learned as a kid thanks to having no friends and no siblings
and be able to translate it fast enough and respond in the appropriate way I ended up getting in trouble and after 3 years because of that stress I ended up in jail because I could not handle the stress of the social skills the lack of them that I have
I’m finally stable living on my own and I realized after the last 3 years living on my own the reason why my social skills were so bad was because I was feeding off of the different personalities of who I was living with and my brain had to work even harder to try to transfer from one situation to the next so I don’t want to have to go back to living with others just because you guys want to cut services for people who have pre-existing Mental Health disabilities
Please protect us and not hinder us and make us more disabled because you guys want to save on money
And I also have seizures thanks to the traumatic brain injury and if they get rid of Medicare and Medicaid they ruined it for people who want to live independently when it comes to money when it comes to Apartments because you have to either make two to three times the rent or live with a roommate or have a cosigner which is discrimination against people with disabilities and the poor whatever happened to getting adequate housing through the American Disability Act and the Fair Housing Act
This last summer I was having water problems in my apartment and I volunteer somewhere and for 3 months I couldn’t even volunteer because of the stress of having to report my address changes twice within 4 months because my food stamps my lease my consumer bill and my cable was do all in between June and September so how do you expect for me to hold down a part time job just to make ends meet if I couldn’t even in a calm environment volunteer because of the lack of social skills and different people’s personality stressing me out not to mention trying to cut programs like food stamps and make people have to go back to work just to be on the program