[Congressman Jim Langevin - R.I.] Well, good afternoon everyone. Senator, it is great to be on the conference call with you today. It is a privilege to participate with you. I also want to thank you all for joining the call today. I know that Hilary is so pleased to have you here, and again it is an honor for me to participate.

I am here today to introduce my friend, Hillary Clinton. I have had the privilege of knowing her for many years now and for those of you who don't know her, I want to say with a strong champion that she is for her family and people with disabilities.

I would like to take [ indiscernible ] to tell you one thing that you may not know about her which is her first job of was work on a project of the Children's Defense Fund in Massachusetts. She works door-to-door to try to understand why the school enrollment figures were so much lower than the [ indiscernible ] figures buried secretly realize the difference was children with disabilities who were sent the message that they could not be educated but to desperately wanted to go to school.

Hillary helped write a report about the issues and took it to Congress which helps create the political momentum to pass the ADA Act back in 1975. She is still advocating on behalf of the children with special needs. She helped write that Act in 2004 and ensured that current resources were dedicated to training and aggressively look for the link between environmental toxins and disabilities and supports the ADA Restoration Act, something that is particularly timely today which will finally eliminate the institutional bias in our Medicaid and Medicare system.

She never stopped fighting for affordable and accessible quality health care for all. So I endorsed Hillary for President for so many reasons, but one of the most personal is my strong belief in her commitment for disability. And I know that as president she will be energetic and trusted advocate for the disability community.

So without any hesitation I am happy to turn things over so that you can get with Hillary personally to expand on the opportunity of people with disabilities. I wanted think all of you for being on the call. I want to thank you for your commitment on behalf of Americans with disabilities. Is a privilege to be working with you and your campaign and an honor for me to support you.

[Senator Clinton] Well, Jim, I appreciate that kind introduction. Your endorsement and support and good counsel means so much to me because the hard work you have done in Rhode Island is a real testament to your phenomenal commitments to your job and how you just have made it very clear that you are a man of great ability, and I am just delighted to have you want this call and by my side in this campaign and I want to thank everyone for joining me. I am looking forward to working with you and wish we had more time to talk today. I hope this is the beginning of a long ongoing dialogue.

Today I am honoring the eve of the 17th anniversary of the ADA Act and unveiling in economic opportunity for people with disabilities.

As the ADA was a landmark piece of legislation that resulted in almost two decades of significant progress, but we all know there is much more work to be done. I am certainly very strongly in favor of renewing my commitment to the ADA. I have been proud to work with Tom Arkin who has been an incredibly strong champion for his entire career as well as others on the ADA Restoration Act. If it is not signed in the next 18 months I look forward to inviting all of you to the White House when I signed that bill into law and I am President is because the ADA is the baseline on which is economic [ indiscernible ]. I want to level the playing field, but I think we have to go even further. It is not only a moral but an economic imperative. Our country will not reach its full potential unless we ensure that people with disabilities have the ability to reach their full potential.

Americans with disabilities have half the employment rate in double the poverty rate of those without disabilities, even if people with disabilities graduated from college to work at only two-thirds the rate of other college graduates. I want a nation where we offer people with disabilities with the investment an opportunity to survive. So at the heart of the proposal I am highlighting today is a simple idea. We should help ensure that people with disabilities should do what price meaning to many of us, namely our work.

At the federal level I have a two-part strategy. Provide assistance and federal benefits. Specifically as President one of my first actions will be to reinstate the Executive Order that my husband signed to hire 1,000 people with disabilities into Federal appointment. President Bush unfortunately abandoned this commitment and I look forward to getting it back on track. I will also double our investment and work enabling technologies by providing more low-interest loans to enable people to purchase them and provide real-time support for employers to help them get the tools that they need to make it possible to bring about the accommodations necessary to enable successful work. I also intend to introduce incentive to work in the program. One of the greatest accomplishments of the administration with respect to people with disabilities was to sign the Ticket to Work and Work Incentive Improvement Act into law. As a result 31 states have enacted policies to reduce that.

That represents significant progress, but let's be honest. It is only a start. State policies are uneven. In my presidency I want every person in every state to have the same opportunity to work without penalty. As president of the work to reduce premiums under Medicaid plans for individuals with disabilities and eliminate the Medicare eligibility time limit an individual can work and conduct a review of Medicare and Medicaid to determine where disincentives to work still exists and where we can do better.

Finally I want to enact a $1,000 worker disability tax credit to offset and further lower the expense that are keeping people from work. I obviously strongly believe that by working together we can break down the barriers to employment and empower people with disabilities to find fulfilling jobs and careers. And I look forward to working with each and every one of you toward that end.

I am posting a full description of my policies on my website and I hope he will check it out and I hope you will let me know. I wish I had more time with you. I am sorry my schedule is jam packed but I am planning to do this again on another aspect of my disability agenda because this is a part of my conversation with America. And I wanted to be just that, a conversation. I want to hear from you, and I want you to interact with my staff. I want you to be part of my campaign.

One person I would like to recognize for a few words is my friend, Tony Coelho. Tony, would you say a few words for us?

[Tony Coelho] Thank you, Hillary. I appreciate your statement and your announcement, the initiatives that you will put into effect once you are President. But I want to applaud you for all the things that you have done over the years as First Lady and as a Senator, the respect that you have shown and the recognition that you have shown and the inclusion that you have shown has been outstanding and we appreciated very much. Your willingness to include us in your campaign I think this is a signal that something that our community -- not only those who are running for president, but people who will become president. So we appreciate some of your statement today. And I am looking forward soon that first month you are in the White House when you take out your handy-dandy little pen and sign the executive order to start the process of hiring 100,000 people with disabilities in the Federal government. I think that is a signal that employers and everybody would get and it is significant. And we appreciate it very much. The ADA will be -- the ADA Restoration will be introduced in the House tomorrow by Jim Sensenbrenner and hopefully in the Senate soon. Hopefully be will end up with over 100 co-sponsors in the House side and the process will begin and we appreciate very much your support and your willingness to help us move that bill in the Senate and hopefully get it signed in this Congress, but if not then signed when you are President of the United States. So we appreciate your enthusiasm and support for our cause. And I know that another good friend of yours, Andy Imparato, the President of the American Association of People with Disabilities [ indiscernible ] he but like to ask. Andy?

[Andrew Imparato] Thank you and I want to join you in thinking Center client for your leadership both as First Lady . The American Association of People with disabilities has been working hard to have this kind of dialogue around where the country is headed, particularly during this around the ADA anniversary as very appropriate. He said at the beginning you want this to be beginning of a lot of ongoing dialogue. We have over 100 people on the call from the grass roots of the disability community in that want to thank you and your campaign for making it possible for people who are deaf and have hearing loss to be able to follow the call with real-time captioning. And I am wondering if you can tell us what the best way for people who want to be part

[Senator Clinton] Well, Andy, thank you so much for your leadership and I'm delighted that you're on this call and I'm Looking forward to working with you and everyone who has participated today. [Disability Coordinator is Emily Hawkins, ehawkins@hillaryclinton.com; telephone (703) 875-1285]

Katherine Brown is also very happy to speak with any of you about specific policy matters. We are getting geared up and staffed up, so the contact person may change as we go forward but for now, Emily and Katherine are the two people that I hope you will contact and be in touch with. Of course, Congressman, Langevan, Tony, Andy, any of the people on the call, we're all in this together to try and move this agenda forward, so I hope to hear from you. I hope to meet with you, and I look forward to continuing to work with you. I'm Sorry, I'm going to have to sign off right now but I look forward to being in touch with you and again, thank you so much for taking your time, and I hope we're going to be successful in moving these important priorities forward. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.

Thank you.