Nearly a quarter-century after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, there was no committee in the United States Senate charged with focusing on disability issues or people with disabilities. So when he became chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Aging, U.S. Senator Bob Casey (R-PA) simply went further and added disability issues to his purview.
“We kind of decided that this would be part of the committee’s work,” Casey told the Capital-Star. “And no one stopped me.”
Robert P. Casey Jr. is leaving the U.S. Senate at a time when his public service policies are becoming increasingly uncommon. In November, he lost his bid for re-election to a fourth term to Republican Dave McCormick.
Casey’s political career has a clear direction: helping vulnerable people. This list included not only disabled people, but also elderly people in nursing homes that provided substandard care; veterans who experienced health problems related to exposure to burns while on vigorous duty; pregnant workers exposed to discrimination; children in low-income families; and miners who did not want to breathe polluted air.
But it was the Achieving a Better Life Experience Act (ABLE), which went into effect a decade ago this month, that became Casey’s most famed piece of legislation. ABLE accounts allow people who become disabled before age 26 to save more than $2,000 without jeopardizing the asset limits of federal assistance programs such as SSI and Social Security, which many disabled people rely on.
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It was one part of Casey’s ongoing work on behalf of the disability community, first as Pennsylvania’s auditor general and later taking over for former Sen. Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, in the U.S. Senate.
As he always does when talking about his 18-year career in the Senate, Casey was quick to share praise with others who have worked with him when he talks about the ABLE Act, pointing out his disability policy director, Michael Gamel-McCormick, as “ “rock star” in the disability community.”
Throughout his political career, Casey’s reserved and unassuming style has been called — and even gained — dullness compared to a bowl of oatmeal. But confusing his serene demeanor with weakness is completely wrong and misrepresents how effective and determined Casey was in representing Pennsylvanians who did not always have a seat at the table where decisions are made.
When meeting with constituents, Casey listened more than she talked, a vanishing but critical skill needed to craft effective legislation. He was praised for placing disabled people in positions of influence while working on legislative solutions that would enable disabled people to support shape policies that directly impact their lives.
Casey told the Capital-Star that he believes “the disability community has never been more engaged and effective. Part of that was the work that I and others did to bring up disability issues, to kind of bring them to the forefront,” he said. “But part of that was due to the threats posed to the disability community by the 2017 effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.”
Casey said that without the work of their “broad and deep” community, he believes the ACA would be repealed. “I think some of the most compelling testimony I have ever read as a public official was provided by families with a disabled child, usually mothers coming to the Capitol, often bringing a son or daughter, who were dependent on those children for important programs.”
He said that, as with any person who takes up a cause or becomes an advocate for an issue or group of people, his interest in the work came from many sources. Casey pointed to his work as auditor general, during which he released a 1998 report on the state health department and its flawed nursing home regulations that often allow complaints to drag on while patients suffer.
“In the Senate, in terms of working for people with disabilities, it was kind of an outgrowth of the work I did in state government, but I was also motivated by opportunity,” he said; no one took over the duties of the delayed Sen. Ted Kennedy and the retiring Harkin, leaving a void. “The disability community literally came to me and asked for help, but if Tom Harkin was still in the Senate, these opportunities might not have been available.”
Casey said that toward the end of his Senate term, he did a lot of reflecting and trying to remember what drove him to work with people with disabilities. Unlike Kennedy and Harkin, he had no direct personal relationship or a disabled family member. He said he remembered his father, former Pennsylvania Gov. Robert P. Casey Sr., who was a staunch supporter of the policy, further evidence of the profound influence the Casey family had on public policy.
“When my father was auditor general,” Casey said, “I distinctly remember a black-and-white Easter Seals campaign photograph of a child with a physical disability… I think that’s the first time I remember learning anything about children with disabilities and the connection to a public official or politics.”
More recent legislation that Casey shepherded through Congress was the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which entered into force in 2023.
“This is a bill that I kind of went it alone,” Casey said, because he had difficulty finding a Republican willing to co-sponsor the bill after original sponsor Kelly Ayotte lost her Senate seat in the 2016 election.
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Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana finally got involved to support build support for a bill that would require a company with 15 or more employees to provide pregnant workers with reasonable accommodations, such as extra bathroom breaks or the ability to sit while working.
Neither the Pregnancy Discrimination Act nor the ADA provided the accommodations that pregnant workers needed to ensure a robust pregnancy, so, Casey said, “they borrowed the two-word solution from the ADA: ‘reasonable accommodations’.”
“Once we got through it [Senate] Health, it was a question of ‘how do we get this on the floor,’ so we attached it to the appropriations bill passed in December 2022 and that’s how it was done,” Casey said, giving credit once again to her colleague: “Bill Cassidy had to take members of his own party because half of his club voted against the amendment.”
During his finale Senate Committee on Aging hearing earlier this month – during which the focus was on job opportunities for people with disabilities – labor advocate Ai-Jen Poo called Casey “a generational leader on the generational challenges we face as a nation. Thanks to your leadership and hard work in this policy area, the lives of millions of people have improved,” she said. “While it is daunting to face the challenges ahead without you at the helm, we are determined to carry the torch forward.”
As he left the Senate last week, Casey quoted Martin Luther King Jr. in a statement that also describes Casey’s time in office:
“Anyone can be great because anyone can serve,” he said, quoting King. “King taught us with this simple statement that the word ‘great’ in this context does not mean fame, recognition, notoriety or wealth. Great is about something much more valuable: the ability to help others. I will continue to do my best to serve as a citizen and resident of Pennsylvania.”
Even during a tumultuous Senate campaign and despite the challenges facing the incoming administration, Casey continued until his final days in the Senate the silent work that had such a significant impact on his home state and millions of Americans.
Pennsylvania is losing a dedicated warrior with deep congressional experience. But it was fortunate that he was represented by someone with Casey’s unwavering compassion for people who simply needed support from the government.
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