Beto O'Rourke

Given this consolidation, this admission that the VA will not be able to provide all things for all veterans within the walls of the VA medical facilities.

So we are having a really hard time not even treading water, but just not sinking all together.

I want to be an advocate for that funding, and I want to be able to convince my colleagues that that funding is necessary.

If you say we are at high risk, does $148 million total base in OCO for the U.S. Army get you where you need to be?

There have to be consequences if there are new authorities and resources given to get the job done.

Pay whatever it costs to get the appropriate person.

I will again submit it should be a 13-point program and point number one should be reduce veteran suicide.

Whatever imperfections or improvements that can be made, let's get to them as quickly as possible.

If anyone has a specific number, I would love to hear it now. If not, we would just request that as a followup question for the record.

I hope that the political will and political collaboration exists or will develop to allow us to do that.

Not sure to whom I should address this question, but I am interested in the IDES, or the Integrated Disability Evaluation System, that is supposed to ensure that a wounded or disabled service member is either reintroduced back into Active…

Does the capacity then also exist to complement care provided at the VA where you have unacceptable wait times, especially in specialties like behavioral health and mental health?

I look forward to seeing that and to the degree that you can localize that capacity, I would love to know, for example, William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso at Bliss, what we have and what we project going forward.

I want to, in addition, commend you for the focus on mental health access and treating veteran suicide like the crisis that it is.

I think articulating that from the very top that this is, in addition to overall access to better health care, physical and mental, reducing veteran suicide is a priority.

I want to know what we are going to do to elevate it beyond where you are today to recruit those providers to underserved communities like El Paso.

For their mental healthcare needs, while they were Active Duty, they were met almost without fail, without complaints.

You did a tremendous job working with our local VA, which is physically conjoined with William Beaumont.

I probably had 40 public townhall meetings, you know, where everyone was invited, no holds barred, any issue or topic.

What I would say is that the Navy's experience in reducing shipbuilding and aircraft acquisition costs through the use of both multiyear procurement contracts and block buy contracting offers an example that can be considered by this…

One of the oldest lessons in shipbuilding that has been learned many times over is to avoid design construction concurrency.

We will never allow Afghanistan again to become the launching pad for attacks against the United States.

If you prioritize something, it puts that at the top of the list.

I am talking about a single-minded, almost exclusive focus on getting that up.

Preventing veteran suicide is more important than all of those.