Senate Democrats are urging the Trump administration to drop its plan to ditch the Army’s preference for blind vendors, calling the move unjustified and saying it will hurt job opportunities for workers with disabilities.
The Education Department disclosed in December that blind applicants would no longer get the same priority to operate the Army’s dining halls, claiming the policy has led to “significant price and efficiency issues.” The change, first reported by HuffPost, would effectively kill a policy that’s been in place at the Army since the Great Depression to help combat job discrimination against the blind.
In a letter Friday to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) wrote that the change “halts blind entrepreneurs from serving our servicemembers” and jeopardizes 24 contracts on 22 Army bases.
“The Department of Education provided little evidence or justification for this change, which shows a deep disregard for the history and purpose of the Randolph-Sheppard program,” Markey wrote, referencing the 1936 law that created the preference. “We should be expanding employment opportunities for people with disabilities, not rolling it back.”
Markey, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, challenged McMahon to produce documentation proving the program hurts Army readiness, as the Education Department claimed when announcing the change.
Weakening the Randolph-Sheppard program appears to be part of President Donald Trump’s broader effort to unwind decades of policy aimed at boosting employment for underrepresented groups. The White House has wiped out mandates that federal contractors maintain affirmative action programs, and attacked labor policies that have even a whiff of “diversity, equity or inclusion.”
McMahon’s waiving of the priority for blind vendors appears to have been done at the urging of Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll, a Trump appointee. Driscoll claimed on a podcast last year that the preference had been abused and that it forced the government to overpay. “It’s been interpreted over the years to basically mean we have to prioritize blind people when we go out for our chicken contracts,” he said.
The Trump administration didn’t point to any studies demonstrating waste when it announced the change, and such claims have been disputed by groups like the National Association of Blind Merchants, which is part of the National Federation for the Blind. The NABM’s president, Nicky Gacos, called the policy change “alarming.”
“Blind entrepreneurs have a proven record of managing complex dining operations, including on military installations,” Gacos, who’s been a vendor under the program, said in a statement. “Weakening this priority puts our livelihoods at risk and undermines a Congressionally mandated program that has delivered economic opportunities for nearly ninety years.”
During last fall’s government shutdown, the administration tried to lay off three blind Education Department employees who oversee the Randolph-Sheppard program — a sign that Trump officials may be looking to weaken or eliminate it, despite the law still being on the books. Those layoffs and others were later paused by Congress in a deal to fund the government.
One of those workers told HuffPost at the time that the administration seemed to show disdain for workers with disabilities.
“The mentality of these people is if we have a disability and we have a job, we’re taking it away from an able-bodied person,” the workers said. “It’s not enough that I went to an Ivy League school, that I went to law school and can run circles around half the Cabinet. … It doesn’t matter, because we’re blind.”
