A Conversation with Tammy Duckworth

When Senator Harkin was retiring
and I was in the House and running for

the Senate, he called me over and he said,
Tammy I’m handing the reins over to you.

It's just sort of fallen to me to champion

ADA issues being a wheelchair user.

And then, when Senator Harkin was retiring
and I was in the House

and running for the Senate,
he called me over

and he said, Tammy, I'm
handing the reins over to you.

I'm handing the torch to you,
and you need to be the torch bearer

and you need to really represent
the entire disability community

because you, frankly, wouldn't be here
had the disability community

not been there
before you even became disabled.

And he was absolutely right.

I find myself being the go-to person
on a lot of the issues

as they come up in Congress.

I said, yes, I was honored.

I mean, to be able to be handed
the mantle from

Tom Harkin is quite the honor.

You know,
I don't know that I can fill his shoes,

but I try every day to make sure
I do my best to represent the community,

but then also to just fight
for basic common- And this is what I did

in the army I fought for freedom-
I fought for people's rights.

And this is just a basic human right

to access the life that you want to access
and live the life that you want to live

and to not be confronted by barriers
at every turn.

I have been working on burn pit issues
for a very long time and it and it started

from just

my own experience
being exposed to the burn pits in Iraq.

We used to fly into Baghdad.

We were stationed in

Balad and we would fly into Baghdad
into the Green Zone.

And if you were on the ground

looking up, would always just the sky,
which is the little overcast.

It didn't look anything, you know,
ominous, but flying through about a 50

foot, 100 foot
layer of basically brown skies in the sky.

We used to burn the air crew’s lungs
and you go through the like,

oh, man, my eyes are watering,
my lungs are burning.

And I always said there was gonna be
some respiratory illnesses.

And then I started working on
Agent Orange issues within the VA,

and it was under President
Obama and Secretary Shinseki

that we finally

granted benefits to veterans
based on presumptive benefits.

If you develop Islamic heart disease,
if you develop leukemia B,

and you were in Vietnam,
we're going to presume that it's

because of your Vietnam service.

Obviously, we no longer force veterans to

prove that

their illness was caused by Agent Orange,
which is presumed.

And so that really started me
working on burn pits

after we were successful
with the Agent Orange Campaign.

And so it's pretty much been
continuous ever since, and I'm really glad

we got the contract passed.

There's more work to do,
but it's a great, great, great, great,

first start.

Yes. So I wrote a piece of legislation

called the ASAP Act to make all of our
transit stations accessible.

All Stations
Accessibility Program A.S.A.P.

I wrote it in this piece of legislation
and introduced it in the Senate.

Coming out of my experience with the CTA,
the Chicago Transit Authority.

I was invited by the CTA
when I was a congresswoman on the

25th anniversary of ADA,
so we’re on the 32nd anniversary.

So seven years ago
they invited me to a ribbon

cutting at a CTA station
and they were really proud,

really, really, really proud that
they were announcing that they were going

to begin this program
to make 100% of the Chicago

Transit Authority's stations,
whether it was bus or rail,

fully accessible.

And I said, this is great.

When is this going to be done?

He goes well it's a 25 year plan.

And I looked at him, Dorval Carter,
who is the president of the Chicago CTA,

and I said, So you mean a half century
after the passage of the ADA?

Is when we can count on this?

And then he went when you put it that way
it sounds terrible.

Like, yeah, it is terrible.

Number one, let me just say that
it's great that you're doing this.

And I said, Why are we here 25 years later
and we still have

stations that are not accessible.

I still to this day
don’t use the L in Chicago

because not all stations are
accessible and you never know

if one is going to be or not.

And he said, well, it's
because we have a limited amount of money.

And ADA accessibility
has always been a priority for us.

It's always been in the top three, but
we only have enough money for the top two.

And when I have to choose between safety,
as in buying a new train car

or safety equipment for the train car
versus building a ramp.

I'm going to choose buying
new safety equipment for the train car.

I said, so what we're fixing.

He goes, well, we need money
that is sectioned off

that cannot be used for anything else
other than accessibility.

And that would allow us to do this faster.

So then I wrote the bill on this
at the federal level,

and when we were starting to work,
when President Biden was sworn in

and Mayor Pete sorry- Pete
Buttigieg was appointed, I said, you know,

and I've known him from previously
and I said, listen, we got to do this.

We have to do this.

And let me tell you what I'm trying to do.

I invited him out

and he toured one of the CTA stations
where this work was going on.

I explained what we were trying to do.

I said, We can make this happen
in ten years if we fund this

and so in the bipartisan infrastructure
deal, we ended up losing

half the money, but,
we got the first five years funded and

you need to support it.

So he supported it.

It was great
because he elevated it as a priority.

I was able to make it stay even though
I lost half the money, I was able to make

it stay in the bipartisan infrastructure
bill instead of it getting dropped.

So this will be nationwide.

So what we did was we put aside
federal dollars that

first off, the legacy system

but all transit systems can apply
for those dollars to help them

make all of their stations accessible,
not just for like wheelchairs,

but it's got to be vision
hearing cognitive disabilities as well.

You know, when you have to buy a ticket
and it's all touch screen

and, you know, that doesn't help
somebody who has a visual impairment.

Cognitively, if you don't make your app
on the cell phone app, something that

that is friendly for those with cognitive
impairments, then it's not accessible.

So this covers
the full range of disabilities.

Well, it's certainly more partisan.

And after January 6th, it's
been difficult, especially compared

to my time in the House
where I had a lot of bipartisan work.

I will tell you, though,
that I've been able to be very bipartisan

since I've been here in the Senate.

My first piece of legislation
I passed it's

like the 64 day mark, which is the fastest
any senator had done it

since the seventies.

And I did it with Todd Young of Indiana,
my next door neighbor.

And it was very

bureaucratic, cutting red tape.

And that had to do
with municipal building projects.

But we got that done.
President Trump signed it into law.

I passed legislation to support veterans
becoming entrepreneurs,

and that was bipartisan.

And President Trump signed that into law.

I mean, it also will also reduce costs
for taxpayers.

Since January 6th, though,
it has become even more

partisan here.

So you really have to work
to find people to work with.

And sometimes you find folks to work with

that you never expected to because you
don't, you know, I'll give you an example.

I just pass the public safety officer
support back and my partner

in that was Senator Cornyn
actually Republican leadership from Texas.

I don't have a lot in common with him,

but it came out of January 6th
where we have Officer Smith

was one of the officers and we have him on
record on body camera footage being

beaten and receiving

concussive events at least three different
times, two of which he passed out.

And it's on camera

and he went back to work
two weeks later, got time off.

Went back to work. Was told you're fine.

Go back to work.

Two weeks later, and within days

ended up dying by suicide.

And that's when I found out
through his widow

that for our first responders,
like the police forces,

the Police Benefits
Association is not allowed to consider

post-traumatic stress
as being a result of their job.

And so because he died by suicide,

even though the coroner said
this was because he had a concussive event

and that post-traumatic stress,
he had damage to the part of his brain

that controls emotions

and that his death by suicide was as
a result of what happened on January 6th.

His wife still lost all her benefits

and she found out
she lost all of the widow's benefits.

Standing in line at CVS
to get prescription medication.

And I said, that is absolutely wrong.

And I talked to John Cornyn
and he joined me in it.

And so we passed it in a bipartisan way.

Pro law enforcement, pro first responders.

But really drawing on my work from VA,
so when I went to John,

I said, listen, here's what I know about
post-traumatic stress in my work at VA.

Will you work with me to help our police,
our first responders, our public safety

officers, that this is crazy,
that they can't claim PTSD

as being result of their job duties.

And he supported me.

And we were able-

we had a couple folks who tried to shut it
down on the Republican side.

But because Cornyn is Republican

leadership, we were able to work our way
through it and get to a yes.

And I had to stare down
one of my Republican colleagues

and threaten to make him defend
his position

against public safety officers
on the floor of the Senate.

And he backed off.

I won’t tell you who it is
because he didn’t

want to be on record
doing that on the floor.

So we got it passed.

So we can get things done.

Cynthia Lummis helped me
work on water infrastructure.

I wrote the drinking water
and wastewater portion of the bipartisan

infrastructure deal
and that included in a significant dollars

to get lead out of drinking
water supply via grant programs.

And she is on the same committee.

And I went to talk to her and I said,
What do you think about this?

And she said, Well, you forgot
all the people who are on well water.

This system- this grant program you’ve

written allows municipalities to

get reimbursement and gives them dollars
to fix these programs.

But what about people on well water?

Don't they deserve to not have lead?

And so I said,
absolutely, let's write that in.

So we specifically
wrote in the well water piece

and we got

89 votes on the floor of the Senate
because of it.

And then I come later on to find out that
I actually still have people in Chicago

who are still on well water.

So it wasn't just people on the water
across Illinois, which I knew about,

but I even have people in urban areas
who are still on, well, water.

And that was bipartisan.

She made the bill better.
She listened to me.

And even though we rarely vote
the same way on a lot of things,

we got 89 votes on the bill,
and I'm really proud of it.

There’s hope.

There’s hope, yeah.

Maybe if fewer cameras were watching us
and people don't have to play up

for the cameras. We’d get more done.

You know what?

Less people are
needing to do this, you know?