News Journal: The Senate refuses to lend support for people with disabilities

Fifteen months ago, in December 2012, Bob Dole – the 89-year-old former Republican Senate majority leader, presidential candidate and disabled World War II hero – came to the Senate floor in a wheelchair to show his support for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
CRPD is an international treaty based on the landmark 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act spearheaded by then-Sen. Dole and signed by President George H.W. Bush. Sixteen years later, President George W. Bush’s administration negotiated CRPD, which calls for ADA-like protection for people around the world. President Obama signed the treaty in 2009.
CRPD requires countries that ratify it to begin to work toward standards on accessibility and infrastructure for the disabled similar to our own. This will not only help the disabled in those countries, it also will help the estimated 40 percent of U.S. travelers or their travel companions who have disabilities.
One hundred thirty-eight countries have now ratified the convention. The United States is not among them.
Our Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate to ratify international treaties. When the vote took place in 2012, Dole watched as the Senate failed to ratify by five votes, 61 to 38. “I can’t tell you how sad that was for me,” Sen. John McCain said at the time. It was not the Senate’s finest hour.
In an effort to revive the treaty, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Robert Menendez, D-N.J., held two hearings last November in preparation for another full Senate vote on CRPD.
After the hearings, which included testimony in favor of the Convention by two sitting Republican senators, Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., the ranking member of the committee, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., announced that, “Ultimately, I’m unable to vote for a treaty that could undermine our Constitution and the legitimacy of our democratic process as the appropriate means for making decisions about the treatment of our citizens.”
Just what is the hang-up Sen. Corker and 37 other Republican senators have with CRPD? Three words: The United Nations. Despite the fact that there is not one word in the treaty that gives the U.N. any power to affect any U.S. law or court action, the ideological hatred some feel for the institution has trumped all. Somehow, they have persuaded themselves that, because the U.N. is involved, the treaty threatens American independence. The incoherence of some opponents has been stunning. Rick Santorum famously wrote that the treaty could allow the U.N. to make medical decisions for his disabled child.
I don’t think all the 38 senators who voted against the treaty in 2012 actually believe it is a threat to our sovereignty. I do know they have to worry about primary challenges from tea partyers like Rick Santorum who do.
You don’t have to listen to one Democratic voice to make the strongest possible case for ratification of CRPD. Former Republican Gov. and U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “Ratification is an opportunity to export to the world the very best we have to offer. This is a chance to use our rich national experience in disability rights to extend the principles embodied in the ADA to the hundreds of millions of people with disabilities worldwide who today have no domestic protection.”
Tom Ridge, a former Republican governor and the first secretary of Homeland Security, said, “I am disappointed in the Senate’s failure to ratify…The CRPD embodies the protections and opportunities available through the Americans with Disabilities Act, but on a global scale. CRPD is a treaty created by the United Nations that protects the rights of people living with disabilities, including: equal treatment and non-discrimination in access to justice, health, education, employment, and rehabilitation.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also has endorsed CRPD. “The U.S. has been a world leader in developing effective policy to ensure that individuals with disabilities have equal opportunity not only in the workplace but in society,” its statement said. “Ratification will not only enable the U.S. to continue in this important role, but will send an important signal that principles underlying the convention are based on consensus and are achievable, ultimately leading to greater access and opportunity for individuals with disabilities throughout the world.”
CRPD will probably come up for a vote again in the full Senate this summer. Without a change of six votes, disabled people around the world will needlessly be denied equal opportunities, and the United States will lose some of its international moral authority.
Ted Kaufman is a former U.S. senator from Delaware.