In 2016, when Beto O’Rourke was only in his second term in Congress, he was named the Outstanding Legislator of the Year by the Disabled American Veterans organization for his work on the Veterans Affairs Committee.
The national injured veterans organization selected O'Rourke, D-El Paso, for his work on the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs in passing legislation to improve the appeals process for veterans seeking benefits, the organization's website states.
"Since his election to Congress just a few years ago, Rep. O’Rourke has become a nationally-recognized leader on veterans’ issues, working in a principled and bipartisan manner to improve the lives of the men and women who served," Garry Augustine, the group's executive director in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.
This award must have had special significance for Beto. As he has mentioned several times on the campaign trail, he has a sister Erin with special needs. It was rumored during his 2018 Senate run that he would drop just about everything he was doing to take her calls except live interviews.
The photo at the top of this diary is of Beto and his sister at his campaign launch in March.
Trump’s unspeakably cruel budget
Americans with disabilities comprise 20% of the population. They count among the groups that Trump has chosen to terrorize first in threatening to take away their healthcare and then in stripping the regulations and services they rely on. In his 2020 proposed budget, he slashed programs crucial to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the 1995 landmark legislation designed to ensure meaningful employment for individuals with special needs. As reported in May, the administration’s suggested budget cuts include
- A proposed $5 million in cuts to the American Printing House for the Blind (APH)
- $2 million in cuts to special education research
- $19 million in cuts to rehabilitation research
- $11,000,000 in cuts to the Office of Disability Employment Policy
Additional cuts are proposed to almost every program or service for people with disabilities, including the Traumatic Brain Injury program; the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research; the Voting Access for People with Disabilities program; the state Assistive Technology programs; the Family Caregiver Support Services program; and the Native American Caregiver Support Services program.
The President’s proposed budget would also cut $10 billion from Social Security Disability Insurance and slash Medicaid by $1.5 trillion over ten years.
Were this not cruel enough, the administration also proposed cutting relatively inexpensive but valuable programs for families with children in need of extra care. The most egregious of these was the decision to eliminate funding for the Special Olympics, which costs the country a mere $17 million per year. The outcry against this move was so great that it forced an administration otherwise immune to shame to reverse course. The proposed cuts led to a memorable exchange between Rep. Mark Pocan and Betsy DeVos, the least qualified Secretary of Education in modern history.
Beto’s Position on Disabilities
It is impossible to have a single disability proposal since disability affects every aspect of life from healthcare to housing to transportation to employment. This list could be extended indefinitely. Congress, however, has passed two acts that focus in particular on people with special needs, and we as a country have consistently failed to honor these commitments.
1. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): This act was passed in 1975 to guarantee that every child with a disability would have access to a quality public education. According to an elaborate formula, the federal government is supposed to cover 40% of the cost of special education with the rest coming from municipalities and states. We have never reached that level of funding, and at present contribute only 15-17% of the cost of special education. Beto’s position is as follows:
He supports fully federally funding the IDEA in our public school systems. He believes that capping the number of students who can receive special education within a classroom is unconstitutional and arbitrary. He strongly supports integrated classrooms, where students of all and various abilities learn together to cultivate a culture of acceptance.
2. Americans with Disabilities Act: This 1995 Act was supposed to increase the participation of Americans with a disability in the labor force and guarantee their access to services. Here too we’ve fallen short of this goal. Beto co-sponsored two bills while in Congress that pertain directly to this act:
- In 2017, O’Rourke cosponsored the Transitioning to Integrated and Meaningful Employment (TIME) Act to end sub-minimum wage. The TIME Act would prohibit employers from obtaining new permits to pay sub-minimum wage to workers with disabilities. It would phase out the program altogether for employers already paying sub-minimum wage to workers over the next six years. And it would help workers with disabilities who currently receive sub-minimum wage, often as little as 31 cents an hour to transition to competitive employment (minimum wage and above).
- Also in 2017, he signed on to cosponsor the Disability Integration Act (DIA). The DIA would require private health insurance companies to cover long-term care, including in-home nursing and personal care services that provide people with disabilities the independence and freedom to live in their own communities.
Given that Beto was a member of the Veterans Affairs Committee and Armed Services Committee, it is actually notable that he would co-sponsor legislation outside the purview of these two assignments.
In his recently released labor platform Beto proposes an even stronger measure than the TIME Act. He pledges to ensure that workers with disabilities are paid the full minimum wage, which would start at $15/hour and rise with the cost of living.
People with Disabilities Enhance Us
One in five Americans is disabled. The discourse surrounding them invariably focuses on costs – the cost of education, care, housing, etc. But this is only part of the picture. It ignores the contributions that people with disabilities make to every community and every facet of public life. Because of his sister Erin, Beto is uniquely able to see this.
Early in his Presidential campaign he was asked a question by ADAPT activist Rabbi Ruti Regan. Rabbi Regan was upset by statements Beto had made that prisons in TX are the state’s largest mental healthcare provider, and she wanted to know if he believed that people with disabilities should be institutionalized or if he was prepared to accept that they can make their own healthcare decisions.
Here is the full exchange between the two. You’ll notice that Beto answers without any hint of defensiveness. And here’s a transcript of the most important part of the conversation:
We have problem…where Democrats and Republicans alike sometimes think that the answer to those living with disabilities today is to institutionalize them, when the real answer is to guarantee their independence, to allow them to live at home or with their families. Not only would that cost a fraction of what we spend right now to institutionalize Americans who are living with disabilities but [it would] allow them the independence…to live to their full potential and to contribute even more to the success of our economy, of our country in ways that you can measure financially and in ways that you cannot: quality of life, the poetry they’ll write, the paintings they’ll make, the small business that they’ll start, the people they will employ.
People with disabilities are an asset. They enrich the nation “in ways that you can measure financially and in ways that you cannot.” It’s hard to know when we as a nation became so mercenary that we could only measure the value of people in terms of their work. But in pointing to the paintings still to make and the poems still to write, Beto opens the door for a paradigm shift in our national fabric. Judging by this tweet thread, I’m inclined to say that Rabbi Regan appreciated the answer, even at a spiritual level.
Please check out Beto’s vision and plans at BetoORourke.com and donate to his campaign, which is powered by people, not PACs or special interests or corporations.
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Beto is turning 47 on 9/26, so we’re now trying to reach 47 donations!