New Game in Washington: He who kills the economy the fastest, wins.
January 29th, 2008 - Written by Joey
In a fumbling economy, one of Wisconsin’s finest has sought to ensure America’s economic Armageddon.
James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) has decided to join forces with the likes of Arlen Specter and Edward Kennedy, to make employing a productive workforce nearly impossible by expanding the Americans With Disabilities Act, which will reach include anyone with any sort of physical or mental impairment.
For those of you unfamiliar with the current law, it’s pretty straightforward. If you have "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of such individual; a record of such an impairment; or being regarded as having such an impairment", your employer is required to attempt to reasonably accommodate you in your job.
Sensenbrenner’s proposal seeks to expand the law by striking out the "substantially limits one or more of the major life activities" qualifier, which essentially means that someone with poison ivy, migraine headaches, toothaches, etc, could request a "reasonable accommodation" from their employer. More than likely, this would mean time away from work at the whim of the person being accommodated, since many of these "impairments" cannot be proven.
I have news for Sensenbrenner: We already have a crazy maze of state and federal regulations with the Family Medical Leave Act. We already have off-their-rocker judges in Madison setting legal precedence by redefining the ADA in Wisconsin, making it nearly impossible not to be sued by every opportunistic do-nothing, and creating a climate of worry and concern for those who truly do have disabilities yet desire gainful employment.
People are missing more work than ever, thus causing employers to have to hire more people to make up for those who are absent or not performing the job they were hired for, which costs employers more money, and puts a damper on any sort of expansion or future investments. Eventually, employers will just invest in more automation to remove the human jobs. Or worse yet, they just may move overseas to avoid the impossible laws, high taxes, frivolous lawsuits, high health care costs, and over-the-top regulations being perpetrated on them.
I ask you, Representative Sensenbrenner: Which monkey was it that you followed up the crazy tree?
These people have way, way, way too much time on their hands. It’s time to eliminate salaries for legislators.
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