AURORA | If voters turn the House and Senate blue this fall, what will Congress do? That question came near the end of a nearly two-hour long town hall meeting with Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet in Aurora on Wednesday.
Bennet, a Democrat, said getting there is the major hurdle. But if voters do send Democrats to Washington in droves, there is — perhaps surprisingly — room to work with President Donald Trump, who would have to sign any legislation that makes it past both chambers. Infrastructure could be a good example of that, Bennet noted.
“I have incredible hope for this country,” he said, answering another question. A resident wanted to know what was the biggest surprise Bennet, the former superintendent of Denver Public Schools, encountered when he got to Washington.
It was the lying, he said. And that was before the Trump administration, which Bennet said fuels a lot of fear across the nation.
“All that manufactured crisis serves their purpose,” he said referencing the Republican Party.
Most recently Bennet called out Trump on Twitter for lying about the claim that it was actually the Democrats who forced the administration to make a “zero tolerance” policy that has resulted in separating hundred of immigrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy is cruel and does not make our country more secure. Instead of spreading falsehoods, @POTUS can and should end his policy of separating children from their parents at the border.
— Michael Bennet (@SenatorBennet) May 29, 2018
Bennet told the Sentinel before the town hall that Democrats need to make it clear that the policy is not the result of the Democrats.
“We can also demonstrate if Trump actually agrees he shouldn’t be splitting up families, the Democrats are more than willing to make sure that stops,” Bennet said.
Over the course of the two hour town hall at the Community College of Aurora, Bennet fielded questions about immigration, trade, education and housing. One attendee asked whether Bennet supports the Black Lives Matter movement. Bennet said yes, and that he’s using his status as a Senator to attempt to reform the prison system, specifically mandatory minimum sentences. That, Bennet said, is one example of supporting the movement.
Others questioned the Senator about college debt.
The bottom line, he said, is that college is too expensive. One attendee said she and her mother, a teacher, were both repaying loans. Bennet added that he believes teachers working in rural areas should be able to defer their student loans, and all students should be able to refinance their loans.
Bennet said he could remember a time when he was at the helm of DPS that teachers could buy homes in Denver. That’s no longer the case there, or in Jefferson County or in Arapahoe County, for anybody he said.
“That is largely a function of what we are doing as a state, not as the federal government,” he said. “Our failure to invest in the next generation of Americans and our failure to invest in our teachers, and we’ve got to fix that…That’s an issue we really have to solve, and it’s going to require us to change the state constitution to be able to have the resources to do what we need to have done.”
