A short letter to President elect Barack Obama from ChooseAbility founder, Paul Campos

Right now, I have no money, but I do have some ideas on what you can do to stimulate the economy. I have lived my life with muscular dystrophy, I am a college graduate and I worked as an assistant for the coordinator of disabled student services at LaGuardia Community College in 1989. I then worked at the Queens Independent Living Center during the 90s. While there, I was the coordinator of the volunteer program and ran a progressive support group for people with disabilities. Anyway, the following are ideas that I think you can add to your ideas for getting the economy on the right track .

First, an overhaul of Entitlement Program rules that inhibit the growth of people with disabilities. PWDs need more incentives that will allow them to save money and earn money without penalty. The way entitlements are set up, PWDs are afraid to work. I am going to give you one example to illustrate my point. Joe, the computer genius, is offered a position to design a website and basically run the website for $600 a month. Social Security allows a person receiving benefits to earn $900 a month -- so far, no problem, right? Medicaid, on the other hand, expects Joe to pay them $800. Nobody who is making $600 a month is going to turn around and give back $800 just for the privilege of working. There are many other examples such as this, but I won't go into that for the at this time. Here's the thing: some kind of committee or commission should be formed that can sit down and revise the rules so that you don't have contradictory entitlement programs. The rules should be made to give incentives to PWD's so that they can go out and work, pay taxes, and contribute just like everybody else in this country. If a person with a disability is making, let's say, $60,000 a year, for every two dollars they earn over that amount, they can put one dollar back into Medicaid (or something even better than what I am suggesting here). Finally, if you take my idea and make something work, I guarantee you, you can probably add anywhere from one million people to three of 4 million people to the books. There are over 54 million people with disabilities in this country. Offer a way for the very people who are receiving benefits a better chance to get ahead, save money for the future while at the same time put less of a burden on the Entitlement Programs that concern Congress and I'm sure, yourself, now that you will be our 44th President.

President Elect Barack Obama -- ChooseAbility Person of the Month!

Here is a new feature on ChooseAbility.
Every time someone does something powerful, overcoming many öbstacles to achieve something meaningful or special, we will feature them as the "ChooseAbility person of the Month". The first recipient of this title will be President elect Barack Obama. Congratulations Barack Obama! You decided to Choose Ability a long time ago and now, you are the President Elect! So you are The ChooseAbility Person of the Month! May we all use your example to help change the world.