Senator Michael Bennet fields questions at town hall meeting

What is on the mind of local voters?

Even with softball games and late summer alpenglow lighting up the mountains, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet drew a crowd at Crested Butte’s town hall on Tuesday, August 16.

Arriving by townie bike, Bennet made brief remarks before asking audience members to forget what they had learned from their cable news channels of choice, and ask any question or give any feedback they had.
With the median income dropping, the cost of living rising and no new net jobs created since 1995, Bennet suggested that Washington had become a political cartoon, “utterly insufficient” for understanding and addressing the challenges before the nation.
He went on to tell the audience that the dysfunction it observed during the debt ceiling debate is even more dysfunctional than it appears from afar. Crested Buttians agreed, with several speakers expressing concern over the handling of that debate, a lack of confidence in the super-committee appointed to address debt reduction, and disappointment with what former journalist Larry Mosher called President Obama’s “politics of appeasement.”
“I just want to see somebody stand up and call these people out for what they’re doing,” Sue Navy said of the Republicans who led the charge against raising the debt ceiling.
Senator Bennet agreed, stating that within the context of real, complex issues like the wars in the Middle East and the nuclear crisis in Japan, the debt ceiling debate was a manufactured crisis.
“Eighty-five times it’s been lifted, including more times during the Reagan administration than during any other administration…” Bennet said. “It’s been sold as if this is like cutting up your credit card when it’s not… It’s saying we went to Vegas and spent our money there, and when the mortgage bill comes at the end of the month we’re just not gonna pay it.”
Bennet went on to say, “We need to be stronger, we need to push back stronger.”
But the audience’s concerns grew well beyond the debt ceiling as the night went on. Crested Buttians addressed everything from the growing gap between the “mega-rich and the rest of us” to the United States’ food system and the ongoing wars in the Middle East. They also addressed issues cropping up closer to home, like oil and gas regulation, physician shortages and mining.
Young Solace McGruther asked when the government would source organic and sustainable food, and his mom, Jennifer McGruther, questioned enforcement practices of the Food Safety Modernization Act. She suggested that a year-long sting on an Amish farmer selling raw milk or a private buying club in California, to the tune of more than a million dollars, made little sense when salmonella outbreaks from companies like Cargill posed a real threat.
“In both of these instances there was nobody sickened, but Cargill sickened 76 people with their salmonella-laced chicken,” she said. “We need to be mindful of the unintended consequences of things that we pass, and we’re not mindful enough,” Bennet responded.
Steve Glazer asked what kind of progress had been made in reforming filibuster rules. Bennet answered, “No progress is the answer, and I’m sorry.”
Linda Powers made a case for creating a green economy, to which Bennet said, “My children are utterly convinced that we are going to engineer our way to a clean energy economy. They are utterly convinced of it, and I am utterly convinced of it.”
Margot Levy pleaded with the Senator to update the General Mining Act of 1872 so that mining was not a statutory right.  “I am all for updating it and will vote to update it…,” Bennet said. “I can’t stand here and tell you when that’s going to happen.”
Former county commissioner Jim Starr raised the issue of physician shortages and access to healthcare for seniors. Bennet replied, “There are things we could do right now if we wanted to.”
Several audience members questioned the health and environmental risks of natural gas development as a way to transition to domestic energy Bennet said, “I am keenly interested in this resource… but we need to make sure we protect our water and our air. It’s very much on my mind.”
And one audience member wanted to know what Bennet thought of negative interest rates—penalties, in essence, for the wealthy letting money sit unused.
“Now that is thinking out of the box,” Bennet said, making the audience laugh.
The list, in short, went on. It went on for so long that even as the Senator’s aids tried to wrap things up so he could head to dinner, Bennet insisted on hearing a few more questions. And a few more, until he wrapped things up 45 minutes late at 8:45 p.m.
Bennet’s responses were many and varied, but the tone could perhaps be summed up by his response to the need for a green energy economy.
“The idea that we are in the position that we are in today has nothing to do with our capacity to think big,” Bennet said. “It has a lot to do with politics, a lot to do with how our economic interests are rewarded.”
Yet he maintained optimism, saying that behind closed doors in Washington, he sees politicians who are tired of the political game. The job satisfaction, he said, is low—and that fact, more than anything else, gives him hope that things can and will change.
Judging from the town hall meeting, Crested Buttians are tired of that game too, and want what Bennet claimed to want as well: a government that works. Because as different as oil and gas regulation may be from food safety or even filibuster rules, there was one theme throughout: it’s time for politicians to do their jobs, and to be mindful of everyday people.