“They are people who really can’t do anything,” Shawn Tarwater, a state representative in Kansas told a state house committee last month as he argued to protect a scheme that allows companies to pay people with disabilities as little as $3 an hour. “If you do away with programs like that, they will rot at home. There is no place for them to go.”
The comments have sparked a storm of protests from disability advocates and highlighted a system of state tax credits across the US that allows employers to pay people with disabilities significantly less than the federal minimum wage. In some cases, disability advocates say, people are being paid as little as three cents an hour.
