117 Administration had not drafted a bill for a continuation, they could not be ready for a thorough discussion of the program's merits. A special year's appropriation was granted to keep the program solvent until 1972. The Rehabilitation Services Administration, a branch of HEW with direct responsibility for vocational rehabilitation, asked for $552 million as an operating minimum. After consultation with the Office of Management and Budget the Appropriations Committee recommended that the House adopt a figure of $518 million. Giaimo led the successful floor fight and he was buttressed by his 1 colleagues on the House Education and Labor Committee to raise the appropriation $82 million to $575 million. The increase over the RSA minimum was to provide for an inflationary increase in cost and prices of 5%. 3 The success of Giaimo's floor fight was surprising because appropriations are rarely challenged effectively from the floor. There are several reasons for this ineffectiveness. Primary ones are: the Appropriations Committee has control of call-up and time limit of debates the Congressman asking for an increase in appropriations is often depicted as representing narrow constituent interests, and the Appropriations Committee is wary of letting floor amendments succeed fearing a series of challenges and a weakening of its power. 118-119 Yet, the Giaino amendment did pass overwhelmingly, 236 to 153, with 49 Republicans breaking rank and voting against the Office of Management and Budget. The significance of this voting, according to Richard Melià, special assistant to RSA Commissioner Edward Newman, 5 was two-fold. First, it indicated how powerful the Vocational Rehabilitation Program had become--the pressures were strong to vote increased funds, indeed so strong that few dared to vote against it. Second, the struggle over appropriations showed that there could be sharp disagreement over the program; it was no longer sancrosant. Congressmen had differed over vocational rehabilitation in a public vote for the first time in its history. With the ground broken, further differences were not long in emerging. Footnotes Historical Background 1House Report, p. 3. 2Ibid., pp. 3-6, see also Fifty Years of Vocational Rehabilitation, 1920-1970, (Government Printing Office: Washington, 1970). 3Congressional Record, July 27, 1971. Formulation of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act 120 HR 8395, as reported out of the House Committee on Education and Labor in February of 1972, was a combination of two earlier bills, the original 8395 introduced by Committee Chairman Carl Perkins (D-Ky) and HR 9847 introduced by Congressman John Brademas (D-Ind), chairman The original HR 8395 included most of the language of the final legislation. however, because it interjected the emphasis on the severely disabled into the legislative debate. The National Rehabilitation Association wrote most of the Perkins bill, although its Title III called for aid to those with sensory disabilities, namely the blind and the deaf. HR 8395 also initially provided for a national information and resource center for the handicapped; for a national center for deaf and blind youths and adults (later split into two separate centers) and for a national commission on transportation and housing for the handicapped. These provisions, along with others to establish centers for the care and treatment of spinal cord injuries and to provide services for patients with end-stage renal disease, were incorporated into the bill passed ultimately 121 by the House. Senator John Tower (R-Tex) had introduced legislation (S 2813) into the Senate to aid those with end-stage renal disease, and this formed the basis of the House proposal. Senator Robert Dole (R-Kan) supplied the major emphasis for a National Information and Resource Center by introducing S41 in the previous session, a bill that would have established the center. Congressman Wilbur Mills (D-Ark) showed an early concern for the plight of deaf youths by sponsoring HR 5761 which advocated the construction of special rehabilitation facilities for the deaf. The Perkins' legislation, then, incorporated many other bills, but did not focus the concern of the House on the critical question of what persons should receive priority for services under vocational rehabilitation. The Brademas' bill with its emphasis on the severely disabled attempted to answer that question. The National Federation of the Blind originally wrote 9847 with the intention of securing special treatment for the blind under Title III. Brademas and his staff, for reasons that are still unclear, modified the bill by crossing out the word "blind" wherever it appeared and substituted the term "severely disabled" in its place. With this seemingly innocuous alteration in language the fight began to reverse the emphasis of the entire Rehabilitation Program. 122 The issues that had dominated rehabilitation hearings in the past were muted. Whether a state's share of the vocational rehabilitation money should be determined on the amount appropriated by the Congress or whether it should be determined by the actual authorization made by the Office of Management and Budget no longer seemed that significant an issue even though it had been one for several years. Even the Administration's proposal to charge fees for rehabilitation services, making uniform a practice followed by many states, which had touched off an angry debate in the House earlier declined in importance until one observer frankly said: "Don't even concern yourself with the fees question, it ,,1* won't be an issue in the Senate." Those who wanted to see a change in the vocational rehabilitation program had found their issue. As a Washington representative of United Cerebral Palsy * The Nixon Administration had not prepared a bill of 79-885 O 72 pt. 1 - 36 |