A resolution recognizing and honoring the 15th anniversary of the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senators Kennedy, Hatch, Reid, Clinton, McCain, DeWine, Jeffords, Mikulski, Lautenberg, Dole, Durbin, Levin, Lieberman, Boxer, Reed, Chafee, Smith, Collins, Stabenow, Obama, Akaka, Salazar, Dayton, Bingaman, Wyden, Biden, Isakson, Feingold, Johnson, Nelson of Florida, Brownback, Burr, Snowe, and Pryor be added as cosponsors of the resolution.

Mr. President, tomorrow, July 26, marks the 15th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Observances and celebrations are being held and will be held all across the country. In fact, I attended three in Iowa over the weekend. There will be a big celebration tonight at the Kennedy Center where I look forward to introducing former President George Bush, the signer of the Americans with Disabilities Act, who will give the keynote address.

On this 15th anniversary, we celebrate one of the great landmark civil rights laws of the 20th century, a long overdue emancipation proclamation for people with disabilities. We also celebrate the men and women from all across America whose daily acts of heroism and protest and persistence and courage moved this law forward to passage 15 years ago.

In 1964, this country passed a civil rights bill. After much struggle, after the freedom riders and the marches in places such as Selma, AL, that are burned in our memories, we passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which closed a long, disgraceful chapter of segregation and discrimination, lack of equality of opportunity for Americans just based on race, mostly, sex, creed, and national origin.

I can remember coming home on leave from the military some time after that. I was with my brother Frank who had been totally deaf since early childhood. I had seen how he had been discriminated against all of his

lifetime. I remember we were talking about different things, and he mentioned the civil rights bill. He thought it was all well and good. But then he asked the question: What about us? I didn't really know what he was talking about.

I said: Are you talking about us, me?

He said: What about us deaf people? We are discriminated against every day in terms of where we can work, can go, how we get news, how we go to school.

I began to think about it as I finished my career in the military and through law school and coming here to Congress. I thought, as I watched the struggle of people with disabilities to proclaim their involvement, that they should also be covered by the Civil Rights Act. So there were some minor steps taken. We had section 504 of the Rehab Act in 1973 before I got here. Then after coming to the House in 1974, we had the Education of Handicapped Children Act, 94-142, which my good friend, now Senator Jeffords, then Congressman Jeffords, was very much involved in getting passed in the House at that time. It later became known as IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. That is how it is known today.

Then there began a long struggle by people with disabilities to gain their full participation in our society.

This started in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Then when I came to the Senate in 1984, 1985, it had been picking up steam and momentum. Various drafts of bills have been presented about disability and this and that.

Finally, it fell to me as chairman of the Disability Policy Subcommittee at that time to pull together the final draft. Here I will pay my great respect and admiration to former Senator Lowell Weicker of Connecticut, who led the charge before I got here to change the law to provide for an overarching law to cover people with disabilities in our country. But then Senator Kennedy asked me to join his committee and take over the chairmanship of the disability subcommittee, which I did, with the great help of wonderful staff, including Bobby Silverstein and others. We were able to get the words on paper, put it together. It was a pretty long struggle.

It was not a foregone conclusion that we could ever pass it. But there were acts of heroism. I can remember when people with disabilities started coming to Washington to protest. Sometimes they would plug the corridors in the Dirksen Office Building, and the police would have to clear them out. Many got arrested. I remember a man named Dwayne French, who came from Alaska to demonstrate, protest, and demand equal rights under the law. He got arrested and thrown into jail.

I tend to think the one thing that really crystalized what we were trying to do in terms of full participation, accessibility, of nondiscrimination and breaking down barriers--the one event was when Bob Kofka and the group ADAP rolled their wheelchairs up to the Capitol steps, and there were about between 50 and 75 people. I don't know the exact number. They got out of their wheelchairs and crawled up the steps of the Capitol; they crawled up the steps. That hit the evening news, all the newspapers, and the news magazines, and then we heard from the American public that this should not be allowed to happen, that people with disabilities ought to have accessibility; they ought to be able to participate in all aspects of our American life. And then we hammered out the bill and got it passed in the Senate and the House.

As I said, on July 26, 1990, in a wonderful ceremony, the biggest gathering for the signing of a bill in our Nation's history, people gathered on the lawn of the White House for the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act by President George Bush. It was a great and joyous occasion.

For all these years, after 1964, we thought we had torn down the walls of segregation. But there was a group of Americans for whom segregation was a daily occurrence, even after the Civil Rights Act, for whom daily discrimination was a fact of life, for whom equal opportunity was just some words on paper. There was a group of Americans for whom access to the American dream was basically closed because of their lack of participation in economic opportunity and accessibility. These were Americans with disabilities.

I often put it this way: On July 25, 1990, if you were a person of color, say, and you went down to apply for a job for which you were qualified and the prospective employer looked at you and said, I am not hiring African Americans, or Black people, or probably, in the contextual framework of that time, I am not hiring colored people, if he said that to you, you could have gone right down to the courthouse. The doors were open there, and you could have filed suit for discrimination based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. If, however, on July 25, 1990, you were a person with a disability and you went to a prospective employer for a job for which you were qualified--say you rode a wheelchair in there and the employer looked at you and said, We don't hire cripples, get out of here, and you rolled your wheelchair down to the same courthouse door. The doors were locked; they were closed. You had no cause of action. It was not illegal to discriminate on the basis of disability on July 25, 1990. On July 26, after President Bush signed it into law, the courthouse doors were opened. No longer would it be legal to discriminate on the basis of disability in our society.

So for the last 15 years, we have seen what I call a quiet revolution taking place in America. Look around you. You see the curb cuts, ramps, widened doors, elevators that are accessible, and people with disabilities can get on and off buses. I was in Iowa this weekend and went to an ATM machine to get some money, and the ATM machine is a talking one with brail so that a blind person can use the ATM machine. So we now see people with seeing-eye dogs going into restaurants to have a meal. Fifteen years ago, a restaurant could say, Get that dog out of here, we don't allow it. Now they have to allow it.

Now we see people with disabilities working jobs, traveling, enjoying life, going to movies. Yesterday, I went to a Cedar Rapids Colonels baseball game. It was disability day. They have a new baseball stadium there; it is 4 years old. It is one of the most accessible stadiums I have ever seen in my life. All kinds of people with disabilities can come there and enjoy baseball games. That would not have been true before. The old diamond had one place set aside down on the first base line with people walking in front of them all the time. Now they are up high, and they have great seats in this stadium. So we see this all around us.

For those of us who are able-bodied, we kind of take it for granted. It is not a big deal out there that you have curb cuts or access to buildings. I walked into a hotel downtown a week or so ago, where the National Commission on Independent Living, NCIL, was having their national meeting. Four or five people with disabilities coming into the Hyatt pushed a button at the door, and they could get their wheelchairs in and out. We don't even think about that. So it is a quiet revolution.

My nephew, who is an architect, told me a few years ago that now we are designing buildings the way they should be designed--fully accessible to all. We also have closed captioning on television for the deaf and hard of hearing. We can pick up our remote for the TV and punch the mute and see the words come up, and we take it for granted. But it has transformed lives in America. It has made us a better, richer, more fair society. Now the American family is much more complete than it was before.

So on this, the 15th anniversary, I say thank you to the disabled community of America for their long years of struggle and protest, for the hardships they went through just to make sure they were treated equally in our society. I always point out that in the ADA, there is not one nickel given to a person with a disability. It is not any kind of giveaway program. All it does is break down the barriers. People with disabilities now can apply their God-given talents and their abilities and contribute to our society. So it is quite a step forward for America. We have a lot to be proud of and a lot to be thankful for. But I must say that we are not totally to where we wanted to be.

We had four goals when we passed the ADA. One was economic self- sufficiency. Fifteen years later, over 60 percent of Americans with disabilities are still unemployed, without a job. That is still a national disgrace. So I hope we use this occasion of this 15th anniversary, yes, to look at the great

strides we have made and how far we have come but also to recommit ourselves to make the ADA really complete. We have to do more in terms of job training, personal assistance services, and accessibility so that people with disabilities can have more jobs. Sixty percent unemployment is not right. So I hope we will redouble our commitment to getting this next step passed.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Vermont be given 10 minutes to make his statement at this point.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, in remarks on the floor this morning I spoke about the remarkable progress that we have made since the Americans with Disabilities Act became law 15 years ago tomorrow. Today, the physical impact of ADA's quiet revolution is all around us. Sidewalks are equipped with curb cuts allowing access for people using wheelchairs. New buildings are outfitted in countless ways with ramps, wide doors, and large bathroom stalls to accommodate people with disabilities. Many banks have talking ATMs to assist individuals who are blind. Service animals are welcome in restaurants and shops, and on and on.

For those of us who are able-bodied, these changes are all but invisible. For a person with a disability, they are transforming and liberating. So are provisions in the ADA outlawing discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities in the workplace, and requiring employers to provide reasonable accommodations.

The ADA is about designing our policies and also our physical environment so that America can benefit from the contributions of all of our citizens. The ADA is about rejecting the false dichotomy between disabled and abled. It is about recognizing that people with disabilities, like all people, have unique abilities, talents, and aptitudes and that our country, that our America, is better, fairer and richer when we make full use of those gifts.

Last week, in anticipation of this 15th anniversary, I asked people from all across America to send stories about how their lives are different today thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act. I wanted to find out what the ADA means to people in their everyday lives.

I want to recite some of those.

Before I do, I ask unanimous consent that Senators Cantwell and Voinovich be added as original cosponsors of S. Res. 207.

One young woman whose name is Cheri Blauwet wrote me and said:

I am a paraplegic as the result of a farming accident when

I was 15 months old. I am now 25 years old and am currently a

medical student at Stanford University in addition to being a

wheelchair racer on the United States Paralympic Team. My

ultimate goal is to become a physician and to work

internationally to provide sport and physical activity

opportunities to my peers with disabilities.

She continued:

I was 10 years old when the ADA was passed in 1990.

Although I didn't know it at that time, my realization of my

own talents and capacities would be shaped on this fateful

day. As I grew into adulthood, I attended a public university

and had an accessible dorm room and classrooms that were

wheel chair friendly. I received financial assistance from

the state Vocational Rehabilitation program. I was able to

apply for jobs, scholarships, and schools and to know I would

be viewed without discrimination. My ability to easily take

buses, trains, and airplanes led me to domestic and global

travel for the purposes of building my sports and medical

careers. I knew that something as simple as a set of stairs

would not stop me from achieving my life goals.

A woman from Chicago who uses a wheelchair and works for the Federal Reserve wrote the following:

I am part of the first generation of Americans with

disabilities to grow up with the ADA in effect, and as a

result, it never crossed my mind that going to college,

studying abroad, or working in a big city would be impossible

for me. I knew these goals would be challenging--as they

would be for anyone. But I also knew they were possible, in

part, because of the ADA. The law laid the groundwork to make

this country more accessible for everyone, and it gave me the

access I need to do the things I'm capable of doing. For

example, I need accessible transportation to go to work so I

can afford my apartment. My apartment is located near a city

bus line, and all of the buses have lifts to accommodate my

wheelchair. ADA helped to make these necessities available to

me and others with disabilities, giving us more opportunities

than ever before to be active members of the community. It's

hard for me to imagine what my life would be like without the

ADA and without the accessibility I take advantage of every

day.

An individual from Laramie, WY, wrote:

The ADA has made a tremendous impact in my life. The

ability to go into a store to shop, or to travel, and to find

a place to stay have been the largest differences I've

experienced. Now, when I find a place of business that I

can't get into or get around in because of my wheelchair,

it's the exception rather than the rule. In 1990, in Wyoming,

the number of businesses I couldn't get into, or get around

in, far outnumbered the number of businesses that were

accessible. That has changed. Many have added ramps,

doorbells, or simply rearranged displays to make wider

aisles.

An individual with a spinal cord injury from St. Paul, MN, wrote:

I'm 32. Growing up, I was never sure whether I would be

employed. Thanks to the ADA, I received accommodations to

enable me to earn a B.A. and a J.D. I passed the bar in 1998,

thanks to accommodations received under the ADA. One of my

first jobs was clerking for a district court judge. Under the

ADA, the court provided me with assistive technology to

enable me to write judicial opinions and orders. The ADA has

made a tremendous difference in my life, both personally and

professionally. The ADA has enabled me to participate in

every facet of daily life, including the mundane things like

going to a movie or staying at a hotel. I can't imagine what

my life would be like if this law had not passed.

A woman who has an 11-year-old son with a disability wrote:

I am thankful for the ADA each time we pull into a

handicapped parking space, hit the automatic door to the

building, and can move around due to widened doorways. Each

time we go into a movie theater and don't have to sit on the

very front row. Each time we go to a theme park show where we

don't have to sit in the very back row.

Those are just a few of the many letters. I ask unanimous consent that the remainder of the letters I have be printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. President, shortly we are going to have a vote on a resolution commending the 15th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act and all it has achieved for our society. It truly has opened the doors and torn down the walls of segregation and discrimination and the denial of equal opportunity for people with disabilities.

As I said this morning, after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, we thought we had done a great thing, and indeed we had. But for a large group of Americans with disabilities, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 left them out because they still faced segregation on a daily basis. They faced discrimination on a daily basis; they faced inequality of opportunity on a daily basis. So the Americans with Disabilities Act, signed into law on July 26, 1990, finally accorded to Americans with disabilities every right that every American ought to have. That is the right to live independently, the right to have equality of opportunity, the right to have economic self-sufficiency, and the right to be accorded full participation in our society. Those are the four goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and now we see the evidence all around us.

On July 26, 1990, when he signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law, President George Herbert Walker Bush spoke with great eloquence, and I will never forget his final words before taking up his pen.

He said, ``Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.''

Today, that wall has indeed fallen. We must continue this progress. We must go forward and not backward.

As I said this morning, we have come a long way in making sure people with disabilities are able to participate in American society. We see people in restaurants, traveling, in theaters and sports arenas, people with jobs, people going to school, people becoming lawyers and doctors and everything else, regardless of their disability, and it is a wonderful thing for our country. It has made us a better, richer, and fairer country.

We only have one other thing that we have to do. We have to make sure people with disabilities have personal attendant services so they can go to work. Right now, 15 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act, over 60 percent of people with disabilities are unemployed, no job. Many of them can have a job if they just have some personal attendant services to help them get going in the morning or help them at night, maybe help them on their job. As taxpayers we know this will cost us less money than institutionalizing people, and it will make their lives and our lives better.

One final thought. As chairman of the Disability Policy Subcommittee, I brought the Americans with Disabilities Act to the floor in 1990. Right after it was passed, I spoke in sign language from this desk down here about what this would mean for people like my brother Frank who was deaf. So I will close my remarks today by using another sign. I will not speak at all in sign language, but I would like to close by saying that there is a wonderful sign--see, sign language is very expressive. There is a wonderful sign in sign language for ``America.'' I am going to teach it right now to Senators who are watching. The sign for ``America'' in sign language is where one puts all of their fingers together like this, intertwined, and makes a circle. That is the sign for America, all of the fingers intertwined, one family in a closed circle. It is a beautiful sign. It really expresses volumes about America.

Fifteen years ago, not all of those fingers were there. People with disabilities were not part of that family. Now they are. So our family in America is more complete, the circle is more complete because of the Americans with Disabilities Act. For centuries they were excluded. People were excluded from our family. Now they are a part of our family, and it has made us a better, fairer, and richer country.

So I hope all Senators will give a strong vote of approval to this resolution; one, to recognize the advances that we have made; second, to recommit ourselves to make sure that we will not go backward but that we will continue forward to even break down more barriers, to become even more inclusive, to make sure that every single person with a disability is a member of that American family.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, earlier this month, America celebrated the 41st anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Next month, we will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, one of the most important civil rights victories in our Nation's history. Those are two of the most important achievements in civil rights in our Nation since the ratification of the Bill of Rights. Today, I want to reflect for a few minutes on another critically important achievement in civil rights: the enactment 15 years ago this week of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

I recently saw a young man wearing a T-shirt. In large letters on the front of his shirt were the words: ``The ADA . . .'' On the back, the shirt read, ``. . . boldly going where everyone else has already been.'' I think that young man's T-shirt sums up the ADA pretty well.

The Americans with Disabilities Act does not grant people with disabilities any special status or position. To the contrary, it simply removes certain barriers that for too long had made it difficult--if not impossible--for people with disabilities to make the most of their God-given skills and abilities, and to participate fully in their communities and in the workplace.

Before the ADA, if you needed a haircut, if you needed to see a doctor, if you just wanted to meet a friend for a cup of coffee, you probably had to rely on family, friends, or a social service agency. Very few transit systems in this country had buses or trains that were accessible to people using wheelchairs. Today, thanks to the ADA, that has changed. If you need go somewhere, you can go to a comer, catch a bus, and be on your way.

Let me tell you another story about the difference the ADA has made. Ann Ford lives near my hometown, Springfield, IL. She is a grandmother now. She had polio as a child. She uses a motorized scooter now, but for many years, Ann walked with crutches. As anyone who has ever used crutches knows, they can wear you out pretty quickly.

Before the ADA, when Ann Ford needed to go to the grocery store, she would first make a very careful list, then plot out her shopping as efficiently as possible so that she could buy what she needed in 20 minutes and be back home before she ran out of energy.

Shortly after the ADA was enacted, the manager of the grocery store where she shopped pointed out a new electric-powered scooter the store had purchased, and asked Ann if she would like to use it. Well, Ann Ford shopped for an hour and half that day. She went up and down every aisle in that store. She said later she had no idea how many things you could buy in a grocery store.

By removing physical barriers, the ADA is helping to reduce some of the isolation and prejudice that people with disabilities too often have to battle. It provides people with disabilities a degree of autonomy and dignity that everyone deserves. That is progress, and that is worth celebrating.

But we still have a long way to go. The physical barriers are disappearing, but there are other, subtler barriers that continue to prevent far too many Americans with disabilities from participating fully in their communities and in the workplace.

As Senator Harkin noted, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is still 60 to 70 percent--the same place it was a decade ago. That has to change. Most people with disabilities want to work, and have to work. ADA mandates access but we can't legislate attitudes. And it is the lingering prejudice or ignorance about disabilities that contributes to this stubbornly high unemployment rate.

Congress can mandate access. With the stroke of his pan, the President can outlaw overt acts of discrimination. But the next step in this civil rights struggle--integrating people with disabilities into our workplaces--is a step we must choose.

Failure to make the greatest possible use of the skills and talents of people with disabilities hurts them. It hurts their families. It hurts all of us. Think for a moment. Where would America be today had we not had Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help pull us through the Great Depression? Dorothea Lange, the great photojournalist, walked with a limp as a result of childhood polio. How much less we might know about our own national history had she not captured it on film for us? How much poorer would the world be without the brilliant insights of Stephen Hawking? How much poorer we would all be artistically and emotionally if we had never heard Ray Charles sing ``America the Beautiful?''

We need to tear down the subtler barriers that prevent far too many people

with disabilities from participating fully in our economy. Not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the smart thing to do.

I want to make one final point. I mentioned that the Americans with Disabilities Act is part of a tradition of important civil rights achievements. But there is one fundamental way in which the ADA differs from some of those other milestone laws.

The Civil Rights Act was enacted primarily to combat legal, institutionalized racism against African Americans. Title IX of the education amendments of 1972 was passed to prevent discrimination against women and girls in education. Those laws and others protect people from discrimination based on certain fundamental, unchangeable characteristics. If you are not born black, you are not going to become black. But any of us can become disabled--in an instant.

Today, you may think the ADA is for other people and other families, but you may think differently by the time we celebrate the 16th anniversary of the ADA a year from now. In fact, one in three 20-year- olds today will become disabled before the reach retirement age.

This past year, I have had the privilege of getting to know an extraordinary American who became disabled doing her job. Her name is Tammy Duckworth. She is major in the U.S. Army National Guard. Her job was piloting a Black Hawk helicopter in Iraq. Last November, just before Thanksgiving, her Black Hawk was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade and she lost both of her legs. Although now a double amputee, she is determined to both walk and fly helicopters again.

Thanks to advances in medicine, we are able to save more people who-- 15 years ago--would not have survived a car crash, or bone cancer, or even military combat. Thank goodness for that.

As we celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, I hope we will commit ourselves as a Nation to work to close the gap between our medical abilities, and our mental attitudes. Let us agree that men and women like Tammy Duckworth, who suffered permanent disabilities, will not be forced to fight in this country for basic rights and gainful employment that is worthy of their skills and talents. Let us commit to work across party lines--as Congress did when it passed the Americans with Disabilities Act 15 years ago--to fulfill not just the letter but the spirit of this important law.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. On this day in 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed this monumental piece of legislation into law guaranteeing equal opportunity for people with disabilities in public accommodations, commercial facilities, employment, transportation, State and local government services, and telecommunications.

One out of every five Americans today suffers from a disability. In the national workforce, there are currently 4 million men and 3\1/2\ million women with disabilities employed. We have made noteworthy strides in granting equal rights to those with disabilities. However, we still have tremendous work to do to decrease the 70 percent unemployment rate for people with significant disabilities.

In my own State of Louisiana, 710,000 people over the age of 5 were reported to have a disability. This means that 14.8 percent of the population in Louisiana suffers from some form of disability.

There are thousands of stories that capture the significance of this measure to people around this country, but I want to highlight just one. Shirley Adams is a constituent of mine, and she typifies the impact that the ADA can have on a person's life.

Shirley's road to inclusion into her community was long and filled with obstacles. She is a woman with many labels--profound mental retardation, visual impairment, a history of seizures, a rare bone ailment, and nonverbal. However, with great determination and courage, Shirley has established a life full of meaning surrounded by people who love and care for her. She would have it no other way.

At age 3, Shirley moved to Pinecrest Developmental Center in central Louisiana. She received care while living at Pinecrest, but she never learned to take care of herself. In 1997, at age 31, Shirley received an MR/DD waiver which enabled her to move from Pinecrest into her own apartment in the New Orleans area where she continues to receive 24- hour support.

Shirley is now able to attend church where she has made lifelong friends. In addition, she volunteers at another church where she assists staff in passing out lunches to children enrolled in vacation Bible study, sending mail out to parishioners, and welcoming people to the services each Sunday. She helps her neighborhood association by watering the flowers to the entrance to her apartment complex on a regular basis.

Living on her own has enabled Shirley to travel, which is something that she was unable to do while living in an institution. She loves to vacation in Biloxi and on the beaches of Florida. She is constantly looking for new places to go and for new adventures. If Shirley has it her way, she will continue to soak up the Sun on the gulf coast and explore new frontiers for years to come.

In sum, Shirley is known and loved by hundreds in her community now. She has a sense of belonging and security that she has never experienced before. Her life is full of people who care for her, and she continues to make wonderful progress in living in her own home to this day. Shirley Adams is clearly an inspiration to anyone who wants to explore their surroundings and lead a very happy life surrounded by loved ones in their community.

Shirley and thousands of others in Louisiana now live a full and complete life. The ADA gives people with disabilities such as Shirley a vehicle to request and secure the accommodations they need for both physical and programmatic access to life in Louisiana.

In 1990, when the ADA was passed, Louisiana spent nothing on home and community-based services for people with disabilities such as Shirley. In 2003 alone, Louisiana spent $157,447,900. These services, inspired by the spirit of equality established by the ADA, allow thousands of Louisiana's citizens with disabilities the opportunity to live their lives as contributing, participating members of our society.

In addition, there are now 3,170 aging or elderly individuals receiving home and community-based services that allow them to remain in their own homes.

The ADA impacts the daily lives of my constituents living with disabilities and for that reason I want to applaud the honorable work being done due to the enactment of this legislation while not losing sight of the fact that we

must work harder to help all disabled persons have equal civil rights and the job opportunities they deserve.

Mr. President, I join my colleagues in commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I thank my friend from Iowa, Senator Harkin, for sponsoring a resolution recounting the history and accomplishments under this landmark act for countless individuals in the United States. I am pleased to be a cosponsor of this resolution.

The enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA, on July 26,

1990, was a milestone and continues to serve the more than 54 million individuals with disabilities in our country today. These individuals are now able to better participate in society thanks to the removal of barriers in areas such as employment, transportation, public services, telecommunications, and public accommodations under the ADA. Prior to the passage of the act, it was much more common for disabled Americans to encounter prejudice, discrimination, and physical exclusion in their everyday lives. The Americans with Disabilities Act marks the culmination of a civil rights movement that keeps faith with the spirit of our forefathers, who believed in the unalienable rights of all individuals.

Under the ADA, my home State has become a leader in providing new and updated facilities for individuals with disabilities. An estimated 148,000 people in Hawaii are living with a disability, and an estimated 22,000 people have difficulty performing self-care activities, such as dressing, bathing, or mobility inside the home according to the 2003 American Community Survey.

Since the passage of the ADA, Hawaii has modified more than 5,000 curb ramps and built 3,000 new curb ramps for better accessibility throughout the State. No one should be denied access to buses, sidewalks, or parks, and I am pleased to say that Hawaii is one of the leaders in ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in society. By next year, Hawaii's public sector will be almost 100-percent accessible and, as of today, 70 percent of the private sector has addressed or is addressing the needs of the disabled, according to a nationally recognized ADA consultant.

I join the more than 40 million disabled Americans who have been helped by the ADA in saying mahalo to those who championed this historic piece of legislation. In particular, the tireless efforts of Justin Dart, Jr. His courage and dedication as a disability rights advocate is exemplary in protecting the civil rights of disabled Americans. Mr. Dart has inspired future generations of disabled Americans to reach their full potential as active and engaged members of society.

The work of my fellow Senators Harkin and Kennedy in the Senate, as well as Representative Hoyer in the House, must also be recognized in addition to everyone else who pushed for this legislation. It was my great privilege to vote in favor of the conference report when it passed in the Senate on July 13, 1990. Our collaborative work in Congress to push the ADA through to passage showed a strong commitment to civil rights and equality. Millions of Americans are forever grateful for the chance they now have to live a better life.