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General research funding
- Expand funding within the Institute for Education Sciences for research on how early-childhood professionals can best support children with disabilities.
- Double the budget of the National Institute for Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research.
- Require the NIH grant-review processes to include people with disabilities as reviewers.
- Require that at least half of each condition-specific advisory committee, such as the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, is composed of individuals with the relevant disability.
- Expand pre- and postdoctoral training grants for researchers with disabilities.
- Re-authorize the Autism CARES Act with provisions to increase the proportion of autism research funding allocated to the needs of autistic adults.
- Grow the representation of autistic people and others with developmental disabilities in disability programs.
- Permanently re-authorize the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute created by the Affordable Care Act.
- Establish a Center for Clinical Research within the NIH to develop and test drugs for conditions with limited or expensive treatment options.
- Create a prize model to spur innovation for drugs.
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Secondary education and jobs
- Abolish sub-minimum wage.
- Devote $50 billion over the next decade to expand career and technical education opportunities to prepare students for well-paying community employment.
- Require universities to have a minimum number of full-time University Disability Services personnel.
- Create a federal jobs guarantee that would include workers with disabilities.
- Increase the budget of the Employment Equal Opportunity Commission, and provide funding for employment ‘testers’ to address disability discrimination.
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Early intervention and primary education
- Fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
- Establish universal childcare and preschool.
- End restraint and seclusion in schools through the passage of the Keeping All Students Safe Act.
- Invest in expanding access to augmentative and alternative communication for students who need communication assistance.
- Lower the age at which schools must begin transition planning for students with disabilities from 16 to 14.
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Housing policy
- Build nearly 10 million permanently affordable, accessible homes to fully close the gap in affordable, accessible housing units.
- Fully fund housing-choice programs.
- Encourage zoning and development designed to maximize the number of housing units accessible to people with disabilities.
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Criminal justice
- Make discriminatory law enforcement interactions with people with disabilities a major enforcement priority of the Civil Rights Division.
- Fund police training on bias and how to interact with people with disabilities.
- Create a civilian corps of unarmed first responders for mental health crises, such as social workers, emergency medical technicians and trained mental health professionals.
- End solitary confinement for people with disabilities.
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Healthcare
- Create a single-payer healthcare system, including long-term services and supports, dental and vision.
- Instruct the Department of Justice and the Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights to issue rules protecting people with disabilities against healthcare discrimination.
- Issue an executive order instructing the secretary of Health and Human Services to incorporate people with disabilities into the agency’s definition of medically underserved populations.
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For caregivers
- Issue guidance through the Department of Education to require consideration of supported decision-making as part of post-secondary transition planning and to prevent schools from unnecessarily funneling students with disabilities into guardianship and conservatorship.
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Drug pricing
- Allow Medicare to negotiate with big drug companies to lower prescription drug prices.
- Allow patients, pharmacists and wholesalers to buy low-cost prescription drugs from Canada and other industrialized countries.
- Cut prescription drug prices in half by pegging prices to the median drug price in five major countries: Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan.
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Miscellaneous
- Create a National Office of Disability Coordination, run by a person with a disability, to protect the civil rights of people with disabilities.
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