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Did you know that only one-half of one percent of those Americans with disabilities presently receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) are employed? How many more of us do you think would like to work but cannot, because we would lose cash benefits if we earn over $500 a month and Medicare and Medicaid health coverage if we work more than three years?

The U.S. Senate just passed the Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999 -- unanimously! They passed it with overwhelming support because they recognized one simple fact: if only another one-half of one percent of us with disabilities were to join the workforce, the savings to the Social Security Trust Funds over our work lives would amount to $3.5 billion. This is to say nothing of course of the vast improvements we would all experience in the quality of our lives. President Clinton supports this Act and asked Congress to enact this legislation in time to celebrate the ninth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), this July 26. Under the current law, many of us simply can't work and keep Medicare and Medicaid.

This Work Incentives Act represents landmark legislation if the U.S. House of Representatives can do some simple arithmetic and pass this already well-crafted law untouched. The Act's stated purpose is fourfold...

provide health care and employment readiness services, including career preparation and placement services for us that will enable us to reduce our dependency on cash benefit programs
encourage states to adopt the option of allowing us to purchase Medicaid coverage, with premiums set according to a sliding scale
allow us the option of maintaining Medicaid coverage
provide grants to states to create the needed infrastructures to support our return to, or beginning of a work life
These infrastructures would cover a wide range of special needs and would be flexible enough to nurture self-sufficiency through employment rather than maintain the barriers which have fostered so many years of dependency for so many of us.
But more important than anything else, this legislation would establish a Ticket to Work and Self-Sufficiency Program through the states that would provide those of us receiving SSDI and SSI with employment training and placement services -- "real-world" vocational rehabilitation services and any other help needed for an employment network. Community-based work incentives programs would be established to handle outreach, planning, and assistance with the clear objective of achieving working lives in America's real mainstream community, and not in cloistered, segregated communities with only our own kind, where many of us have languished for years trying to succeed in failed "transitional" employment and "work structured" day programs that go nowhere, only keeping us dependent and trapped between the self-serving mental health system's revolving doors.

This is a great opportunity for us all to achieve freedom and leave dependency behind us, so join New York City Voices and call your member of the U.S. House of Representatives today and urge the passage of the Work Incentives Act of 1999. Tell them you want your ticket to work and
self-sufficiency.