Senate Unlikely To Reconsider UN Disability Treaty
By James Lynch, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier/TNS
November 24, 2014
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, who has helped lead the charge for ratifying the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, says there does not appear to be enough support in the Senate to warrant another vote on the treaty. (Thinkstock)
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin is dismayed that his effort to extend the protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act to the international community appears unlikely to gain the Republican support it needs to be ratified by the Senate.
Harkin, D-Iowa, who along with former Republican Sen. Bob Dole sponsored the ADA, which was signed into law by a Republican president in 1990, had hoped to win over another half-dozen Republicans to reach the 67 votes necessary to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
However, a GOP ally did a vote count and said there has been no movement among the Republican holdouts despite encouragement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, veterans groups and disabilities groups.
“I’m telling you, I’m really dismayed,” Harkin said late last week. “I think it is just unforgivable that we don’t join the rest of the world when we are the leader, when the convention itself was based on the ADA, that we don’t join with the rest of the world in helping other countries change their polices, their programs, their structures to be more inclusive of people with disabilities.”
in full: http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2014/11/24/senate-unlikely-treaty/19868/