article_snippet: Too many right-wing politicians and pundits see disability as a wedge issue with which disability can divide interest groups, pit people who need help against each other and rip apart the core social safety net.
article_snippet: Meanwhile, disability reassure disability base, which is filled with individuals who also need help from the state, that only disability really deserve benefits.
article_snippet: Kansas, under Sam Brownback, has pushed disabled people off Medicaid, making services less effective and efficient.  
article_snippet: Nationally, the new Congress began the year with a sustained attack on Social Security Disability Insurance, which some analysts see as a way to threaten the whole foundation of Social Security.
article_snippet: Last December, House Republicans insisted that the ABLE act, a bill intended to help people with disabilities and people caregivers save money, only be offered to those who were disabled before the age of 26, a limitation aimed at excluding people who become disabled through work, disease, accident or age.
article_snippet: In such cases, the person with a disability is likely to end up in a state-run facility.
article_snippet: Questions about the fundamental necessity of disability benefits infuse right-wing speech on the issue.
article_snippet: Thom Tillis, the new senator from North Carolina, was filmed in 2011 calling Republicans to "divide and conquer" by separating the sympathetic disabled -- people with conditions like Down syndrome and cerebral palsy --  from the unsympathetic (people he implies are just lazy).
article_snippet: That's a rhetoric I see at play regularly, though most lawmakers are too smart to say it out loud.
article_snippet: Recently, for example, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky falsely claimed that 50% of all individuals on disability were "gaming the system.