Consumers, organizations and community groups are mobilizing nationwide to tell the Senate that its COVID-19 package fails to provide Disabled people with #WhatWeNeed. Please join the effort Now! Respond to the Action Alert below and urge your Senators to stand up and stand strong for people with disabilities.
Via our allies at the Center for Public Representation:
On Monday, the Senate released a new COVID-19 relief package, the HEALS Act, that fails to adequately address the needs of the disability community, particularly much needed additional funding for home and community-based services (HCBS), which was included in the HEROES Act passed by the House in May.
HCBS funding is crucial to help people with disabilities and older adults stay in their own homes and avoid unnecessary placement in dangerous congregate settings, where there have been extremely high infection and death rates during the pandemic. Even if you’ve called or emailed before, or shared your HCBS story on social media, we need you to contact your Senators again. It’s urgent that they hear from as many of us as possible, as soon as possible to get dedicated HCBS funding included in the bill.
The Senate’s proposal would also shield businesses, non-profits, schools, or medical providers from liability for serious harm related to COVID-19 in the vast majority of circumstances. This threatens the safety of people with disabilities and older adults in congregate settings, makes it easier for employers to escape liability for discrimination and safety violations in the workplace, and allows businesses to refuse to accommodate disabled people.
Please take a minute to email your Senators now!
- Email: We’ve put together a portal you can use to email your Senators directly here using our email script.
- Call: Call the Capitol Switchboard at: (202) 224-3121 (voice) or (202) 224-3091 (tty) and ask to be connected to your Senators.
- Social Media: You can use this tool to easily tweet your Senators using our sample tweet, below. This easy tool can also be used to find your Senators’ contact information, including links to their Facebook and Twitter.
We are also co-hosting call-in days every Wednesday and we encourage everyone to participate! You can find call-in scripts and more information here
You can also find more information on calling your Senators or contacting them on social media on our website.
For more on what priorities are and are not included in the HEALS Act, check out our summary here and for a quick comparison of the HEALS Act and the HEROES Act, click here. Rather than releasing the HEALS Act as a single bill, it has been released as a series of bills. You can find information on each of those bills here.
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