Sen. Michael Bennet running for re-election to: 'create an economy fair to everyone'
Senator Michael Bennet says our very democracy is at stake this election: "I believe our democracy is incredibly fragile and I think this is a hands-on-deck moment for everyone."
Bennet says democracy is imperiled by an economy that only works for the rich: "When people lose the sense of opportunity in human history, that's when somebody inevitably shows-up and says 'I alone can fix it' as Donald Trump said. He didn't do it, but that's what he said. I believe in democracy and I believe fundamentally what we need to do again in this country is create an economy, that when it grows, it grows for everyone not just the people at the very top."
That is why he has made addressing childhood poverty a top priority, passing an expanded child tax credit that the Census Bureau says cut poverty in half: "There are not a lot of legislators in the history of America who can say that about a bill that they wrote."
Still, Bennet was unable to convince his colleagues to make it permanent. While some of his biggest pieces of legislation - like the Core Act and Medicare X - have struggled to get traction, he says he has a record accomplishment: "I have passed 101 bills that I have written in the Senate - 82 of them had a Republican co-sponsor - and that's just the bills that I wrote and passed."
He also notes he played a key role in making Camp Hale a national monument and Camp Amache part of the National Park System, and he had a hand in writing the Infrastructure, Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science ACT, to boost American semiconductor research, development and production: "The important thing to me is that these bills that I have written have not been written in Washington but in Colorado, on kitchen tables and at town halls that I've had, and that's what I'll continue to do."
If elected to a third term, he says, he will focus on water, immigration and health care. He says he's working with Republican Senator Mitt Romney to allocate additional funding to the Colorado river basin and with Republican Senator Mike Crapo on the farm worker visa program.
He will also continue to push for a public health insurance option, he says, and more transparency in health care pricing: "Nobody knows what anything costs when it comes to health care and so there's no real market. It's broken."
Lowering the cost of health care he says will also help reduce the national debt. The Congressional Budget Office says federal deficits have grown by almost four trillion dollars over the last two years alone as federal spending has soared.
But Bennet blames record high inflation largely on supply chain issues that he traces back to President Reagan making it easier for companies to move operations overseas: "I think we're going to be digging out of this for a while, this global issue and the way we're going to do it, I think, I hope, is by bringing these supply chains back to the United States."
He also blames the Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for a worsening economy: "Cut taxes for rich people in America to the tune of $5 trillion, none of which was paid for."
He says Democrats too share some of the blame: "I think it's wrong that the Democratic party, even though it promised to reverse the Trump tax cuts for the wealthiest people, didn't do it. I think it's morally wrong."
Once a Managing Director of Anschutz Investment Company, Bennet is among the wealthy, but his perspective and public policy, he says, are shaped by his grandparents, who survived the holocaust, and his time as Superintendent of Denver Public Schools: "I truly believe that we're going to lose our Democracy if we can't create an economy that's actually fair to everyone and where people feel like they have opportunity. I think the poor kids in rural Colorado and the kids I used to work for in Denver Public Schools deserve a hell of a lot better than what we're getting."
If re-elected, Bennet would become Colorado's longest-serving U.S. Senator.
For CBS News Colorado's profile of U.S. Senate candidate Joe O'Dea, click here.
