From: Julie Dawson 
Subject: Equality of Opportunity -- HISTORY.TXT  (fwd)
These groups, which are composed of cabinet members and staff,
theoretically report to the Chief of Staff, who coordinates
decisions with the president.  Although a presidential adminis
tration is generally comprised of officials from one political
party, conflicts over specific poli cies abound. 
     Technically, White House policy regarding the ADA fell under
the purview of the Domestic Policy Council, which was chaired by
Roger Porter and included the attorney general, the Director of
the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Secretary of
Transportation.  The key to the ADA in the White House, however,
was Chief Counsel C. Boyden Gray.  There is no formal job
description for the White House Chief Counsel.  Rather,
responsibilities are tailored by each individual president.  Gray
had served as Bush s counsel for eight years during the Reagan
adminis tration.  They became close friends and shared similar
family backgrounds: their fathers were golf partners.  Their
relationship gave Gray considerable influence.   Boyden is the
most powerful counsel to a president we ve had in a long, long
time,  said Gray s immediate predecessor during the Reagan
administration, A.B. Culvahouse.  Gray was selective in the
issues which he engaged.  But  on the issues Boyden has chosen, 
said Culvahouse,  he is awfully damned influential.   And, based
on his friendship with Evan Kemp and following his experience
with President Reagan s Task Force on Regulatory Relief, Gray
took a keen interest in the ADA.
     White House action on the ADA was framed by President Bush s
declarations in support of disability rights legislation.  This
was a relatively unique interest for Bush, as he was best known
and respected for his expertise on, and passion for, foreign
policy.  The question, said Dr. William Roper, who worked for
Porter on the Domestic Policy Council, was precisely how Bush s
commitments would be translated into specific policy.  There were
discussions about the extent to which the administration would
abide by the campaign promise.  But Bush was steadfast in his
commitment to getting a solid act passed.   He wanted it done in
a way that was good for the American people,  said Roper:  this
was not going to be a shell promise.  
     Others inside the White House were much less enamored with
the ADA, and had substantive reservations.  Civil rights was a
charged issue in  the Bush administration.  Kemp explained that
the White House would not entertain any concept of  quotas  with
regard to the ADA.  Officials within the Bush administration
emphasized that people with disabilities needed to be qualified
for any given job, that the original ADA definition needed to be
limited, and that there needed to be a sensible limit to the
responsibility of providing reasonable accommodations.  If these
fundamental issues were settled, said Kemp, the White House could
move forward with shaping the details.  As White House consultant
Robert Funk explained, Funk, Gray, and others reminded skeptics
of Bush s promise.  In addition to Gray, Attorney General Richard
Thornburgh was a crucial advocate of the ADA and Bush s
aspirations.  So was Kemp, who functioned as a vital link between
the disability community and the White House.
     Thornburgh s testimony was crucial: it demonstrated that the
White House was willing to work toward consensus on a bill that
President Bush could endorse.The Department of Justice (DOJ)
organized the various recommendations made by executive agencies,
and Attorney General Thornburgh became the point person to
represent the administration. Thornburgh, as many others, had
personal experience with disability.  His son, Peter, had
acquired a learning disability from an automobile accident.  As
parents, Thornburgh and his wife Ginny had moved from caring for
the special needs of their own son to working for others with
similar conditions.  In Pennsylvania, Mrs. Thornburgh had served
as county chairperson of the ARC and was a member of Presi dent
Reagan s Committee on Mental Retardation. Her work influenced her
husband, who used his au thority as Governor of Pennsylvania to
assist persons with disabilities.
     At the Senate hearing on June 22, 1989, it was clear that
those in support of the ADA within the White House prevailed in
shaping the administration s position, which was presented by
Attorney General Thornburgh.   We at the Department of Justice, 
Thornburgh said,  wholeheartedly share [the ADA s] goals and
commit ourselves, along with the president and the rest of his
administration, to a bipartisan effort to enact comprehensive
legislation attacking discrimination in employment, public
services, transportation, public accommodations, and
telecommunications.   He explained that granting civil rights to
disabled persons would help the American economy by promoting
employ ment instead of dependence.  Moreover, Thornburgh declared
the administration s support of every basic principle, as well as
to the overall principle of linking the bill to the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.  He also
identified areas of concern: drug-abusers should not be covered
by the definition of disability; measures should be taken to
ameliorate the burden on small businesses; the extension of
public accommodations beyond the Civil Rights Act should be
carefully analyzed; attempts should be made to minimize
litigation; the Secretary of Transportation should be able to
grant exemptions to transit systems; and  the most cost-effective
and efficient system  of telecommunications should be pursued. 
Most significantly, however, Thornburgh pledged to begin working,
both at the staff and principal levels, to work toward bipartisan
consensus on the ADA.
     Although there were pronounced differences between ADA
sponsors and the Bush adminis tration, Senator Harkin responded
to Attorney General Thornburgh by emphasizing all the areas of
agreement.  Accordingly, a Washington Post headline declared:
 Thornburgh Endorses Civil Rights Protection for the Disabled.  
This statement masked deep divisions, but it effectively
identified the ADA s advances and potential. 
     Attorney General Thornburgh s testimony was crucial because
it demonstrated that the Bush administration was willing to work
toward consensus on a bill that President Bush could endorse.
Senators Harkin and Kennedy eagerly accepted the invitation to
open negotiations with the Bush administration.  And, as a result
of Thornburgh s testimony, Senators Dole and Hatch laid to rest
the possibilities of introducing competing bills.  The ADA,
sweeping in its provisions, emerged from the hearings with
virtually every witness supporting the concept of the bill. 
Every argument against the ADA met with an effective rebuttal. 
The ADA was sound and it was on the move.
        Negotiations Between the Senate and the White House
     Although Senator Harkin was the Senate sponsor, Senator
Kennedy the full committee Chair and a senior Senator took the
lead in negotiating with the White House.  Kennedy s plan of
attack was to get all parties into the same room and essentially
stay there until all issues were resolved.  These discussions
would include the administration, the Senate, the House, and both
the business and disability communities.  House Republicans,
however, declined to participate, for they did not want to be
bound by any agreements.  Moreover, the White House insisted that
only representatives of Congress and the administration could
join the negotiations.  Kennedy and Harkin wanted disability
representatives to be at the table because they had so much
technical expertise, but they and all other outside
constituencies were not allowed into the negotiating room.  Thus,
only representatives from the Senate and the Bush administration
came to the table.
     The first meeting took place about a week after Attorney
General Thornburgh s testimony in the anteroom of the Senate
Committee on Labor and Human Resources.  Roper was the lead
negotiator for the administration.  He worked especially closely
with Robert Funk, a co-founder of DREDF and a disability advocate
from the Domestic Policy Council.  Osolinik and Silverstein were
the leaders for the Senate.  At the outset of the meeting, in
light of the absence of House Republi cans as participants,
Osolinik insisted on two main ground rules.  First, she
emphasized that they needed to come up with a complete
settlement: leaving any issue unresolved might undercut the
agreements that were made.  Second, she argued that the
administration had to stand by the negoti ated agreements, even
if House Republicans later opposed them and looked for
administration support.  Roper, however, said he could not commit
to these stipulations because he had not cleared them with his
superior, Chief of Staff Sununu.  Osolinik promptly called off
the meeting and said she was ready to continue whenever the
administration was willing to agree to the conditions.  Such
actions led Wright to claim that Osolinik was  one of the
toughest negotiators I have ever seen. 
     Over the Fourth of July weekend, Chief of Staff Sununu
telephoned Senator Kennedy to talk about the abruptly-ended
meeting.  Kennedy repeated the two ground rules submitted by
Osolinik, and Sununu agreed to abide by them.  Accordingly they
made plans to resume negotiations on July 6, 1989, and settled on
the times, participants, and location.  Over the next two weeks,
through July 18, Senate staff and administration staff held ten
negotiation sessions.  From the Senate, the principal
participants were the staffs of Senators Kennedy, Harkin, Hatch,
Durenberger, and Dole. Staff from the office of Senator John
McCain (R-AZ) joined the discussion regarding telecommuni cations
provisions and were pivotal in shaping that portion of the bill. 
For the administration, participants came primarily from the
White House, including Roper and Funk; the Justice Depart ment,
especially the author of the Section 504 regulations, John
Wodatch; the Department of Transportation; and OMB. 
     Although non-governmental constituencies were not allowed in
the Senate anteroom, they waited in a nearby conference room
where they could be consulted during breaks.  Those present in
the meetings devoted several hours to each session, went through
the bill line by line, and identified scores of disagreements for
discussion.  The staffs reached agreement on the vast majority of
issues, but a few unresolvable disputes were left for the
principals.  These more difficult issues included the scope of
remedies (namely the inclusion of compensatory and punitive
damages), the scope of public accommodations (namely whether the
ADA applied to more establishments than those covered by the
Civil Rights Act), exemption of religious groups from the public
accommodations provisions, the definition of disability, and
coverage of drug and alcohol users.
     On July 28, ten days after the conclusion of negotiation
sessions, Senator Dole sponsored a principals meeting in his
conference room.  They met there because of the ample space and
because the office of the Minority Leader was friendlier terrain
for the administration.  Those present included Senators Kennedy,
Harkin, Dole, Hatch, and Durenberger, Chief Counsel Gray, Chief
of Staff Sununu, Secretary of Transportation Samuel K. Skinner,
Attorney General Thornburgh, head of the Domestic Policy Counsel
Roger Porter, and others representing executive agencies covered
by the ADA.  The purpose of the meeting was to hammer out
agreements on remaining issues.  But at one point Sununu lost his
temper and began yelling at Silverstein.  Kennedy slammed his
hand on the table, yelled back that he would not stand for
shouting at Senate staff, and threatened to walk out.  The
discussion resumed, but no official agreements were made: the
meeting was cut short.
     Three days later, on July 31, Senators Kennedy and Harkin
and Attorney General Thorn burgh resolved the handful of
remaining issues and closed the negotiations.  The breakthrough
compromise, which facilitated agreement on other issues, was
essentially a swap concerning public accommodations and remedies. 
In the area of public accommodations, the administration had used
the parity principle against ADA sponsors by arguing that the ADA
should cover only those establishments covered under the Civil
Rights Act.  With respect to remedies, the administration wanted
to exclude compensatory and punitive damages.  As a compromise,
Kennedy and Harkin agreed to restrict remedies to the standards
of the Civil Rights Act in exchange for the adminis tration s
consent to apply the ADA to the broad spectrum of public
accommodations. 
     There were several other major agreements included in what
Senator Kennedy termed a The breakthrough compromise, which
facilitated agreement on other issues, was essentially a swap
concerning public accommodations and remedies. fragile
compromise.   First, with respect to employment, negotiators
incorporated a two-year delay of the effective date for
operations with 25 or more employees, and a four-year delay for
operations with 15 to 24 employees.  Establishments with fewer
than 15 employees were already exempted from the employment
title.  They also introduced stronger language to ensure that
current employees who abused drugs and alcohol would not be a
protected class.  Second, concerning public transportation, the
agreement included authority for the Secretary of Transportation
to waive the requirement of bus lifts for fixed-route systems
when lifts were unavailable.  For private intercity bus
transportation, the agreement delayed implementa tion of lift
requirements for at least five years and mandated a study to
explore how best to make intercity buses accessible.  Third,
regarding public accommodations, the negotiated agreement delayed
implementation for 18 months, exempted religious organizations
and private clubs, and specified that elevators were required
only in buildings with at least three stories or more than 3,000
square feet per floor.
                         Senate Approval
     After reaching a final agreement with Attorney General
Thornburgh on July 31, 1989, Senators Kennedy and Harkin
continued to push the ADA forward, scheduling the Labor and Human
Resources committee mark-up for August 2.  This gave Senate staff
only a couple of days to translate every agreement into
appropriate legislative language.  They did not finish writing
the substitute bill until about 3:00 in the morning on the day of
the mark-up.  The committee mark-up itself was rather
uneventful it lasted less than an hour.  This was mainly because
the intense and detailed negotiations had settled most issues. 
Moreover, committee Democrats and Republicans gave deference to
Senators Kennedy and Harkin, and Senators Hatch and Durenberger,
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