Ralph Ibson

Over my years working in Congress for veterans, I’ve heard many congressmen talk big about their support for veterans, but seen few who get into the trenches to fight for those who served. Rep. Beto O’Rourke is one of those do-ers who’s made a real difference for Texas vets. Senator Cruz has been largely AWOL.

O’Rourke is the rare congressman who make veterans a priority. As a new congressman, he sought membership on the Veterans Affairs Committee. Unfortunately, most see that committee as a last-choice post conferring neither prestige nor fund-raising potential.

I spent 10 years on the staff of the House Veterans’ Committee. We organized hearings focused on problems affecting veterans’ health care — from the need for more VA funding to rural veterans’ lack of access to care. Far too often, our committee’s members came unprepared, woodenly asked the questions their staffs had prepared, and then failed to pursue obvious follow-up. I wish we had had more members like Beto O’Rourke.

What I observed in O’Rourke over years was an earnest, well-prepared, articulate veterans’ advocate who asked tough questions of VA officials, and pressed for answers with sharp, focused follow-up.

Even as a freshman member, O’Rourke was keenly focused on a problem that especially troubled me in my advocacy for veterans injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Too often, these men and women faced long waits to get needed VA care. In El Paso, vets encountered difficulty in accessing mental health care because its VA clinic couldn’t fill several psychiatrist positions. Conducting his own survey, the congressman found that El Paso veterans were waiting an average of 71 days to see a mental health care provider, and more than 36 percent of veterans saw no caregiver at all.

Unwilling to accept the situation, O’Rourke worked relentlessly for years to solve the problem — from personally recruiting mental health staff, to spearheading establishment of a major VA mental health clinic that’s partnering with Texas Tech to provide vets a range of specialized mental health services. The upshot of his efforts, which included winning enactment of legislation to provide more vets eligibility for mental health care, is a reduction in El Paso vets’ wait times for a VA mental health visit down to five days.

O’Rourke has seen success despite an erosion in the longstanding bipartisan support veterans have enjoyed in Congress. Cruz has contributed to that erosion by enthusiastically backing a divisive, deeply controversial plan to privatize the VA health care system. Advanced by conservative moneyed interests, this wholly untested idea calls for creating a separate health system to compete with VA. Its proponents claim that establishing a redundant care-providing mechanism to give veterans “choice” would benefit all. If so, the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and other national veterans’ organizations would be quick to endorse it. But they recognize its dangers to the millions who rely on and have been satisfied with VA-provided care, even as those organizations recognize the need for VA modernization.

Congressman O’Rourke is among the leaders in Congress working to achieve needed VA reforms. Many elected officials insistently proclaim their support for veterans. But talk — Senator Cruz’s specialty — is cheap. O’Rourke gets things done.

Ralph Ibson served as staff director of the Subcommittee on Health of the U.S. House Committee on Veterans Affairs, 1990-2000. Earlier he worked at the Veterans Administration as a Deputy Assistant General Counsel. Ibson was Vice President of the National Mental Health Association from 2000-2008, and served as National Policy Director, Wounded Warrior Project, 2008 - 2014.