Posted: October 25, 2022
Political outsider, successful business leader, and Republican nominee for U.S. Senate Joe O'Dea won his first debate against Michael Bennet tonight in Grand Junction. See the highlights below:
On Michael Bennet: Joe Biden's Yes Man"I'm a rubber stamp for Joe Biden." — Michael Bennet On Inflation"We need to stop the reckless spending. Under the Bennet and Biden regime we just approved $5 trillion over the last two years, after COVID had already subsided. We were beginning to come out and go to work, and we dumped $1.9 trillion into the marketplace that supercharged inflation. And Michael Bennet was the 50th vote that pushed that across the finish line. We've gotta end the war on energy.""This inflation is not gonna come under control until the price of diesel goes down.""Once we move the energy cost down, inflation will subside.""And as far as cutting the debt, we need to be focused on these bureaucracies... We need to reduce the size of government." "You [Michael Bennet] are solely responsible for the $1.9 trillion package that got passed in March of 2021... and that has put inflation on a spiral."On CEI"It's a great business, I've built a great team there. We've been low-bid on a lot of work here in Colorado, built over $2.5 billion worth of work. While you've [Michael Bennet] been building dependency, I've been creating opportunity."On the Rural-Urban Divide "They [rural Coloradans] need relief from this war on energy that the Biden-Bennet administration has led. They've shut us down here on federal permits. If you look at the permits that are actually being drilled on now, they're far less than they were under any other president.""I'm able to talk to people [in the agriculture community] and just hear how hard they are having to work right now to make ends meet. And I think that's something that I will continue to do as a leader. I'll be out here not just on an election year, I'll be here every year."On Energy"The energy policies that we have in place that have been championed by Biden and supported by Michael Bennet have federal permits at an all-time low for drilling. We don't have good export facilities on either one of the coasts right now because we have permitting involved that we can't get through. We do need to export good, clean, American gas into Europe...""If we want to lower global emissions, in Asia let's use good, clean, natural gas from America. When scientists are telling us that we can lower world emissions by as much as 45% in just five short years by exporting good, clean, the cleanest molecule in the world produced here in Colorado, we should be paying attention to that. We do need to get the permitting out of the way so we can raise wind, solar, we can raise nuclear, get all of those energies online so we can begin to replace fossil fuels. But it's not gonna happen tomorrow. What we need to do is make sure that we restore good, clean, American energy so that we can get through this inflationary period that we need to get through right now. At the same time, we'll get out of the way so we can start to bring on new renewables, and I'll support both of those."On Restoring Civility"I've been in business almost 40 years here in Colorado. I run my business in downtown Denver... and I've been able to reach across the aisle and talk to people about projects, talk to people about what we need to get done in our city, and I've exercised that. I believe that the party system that we have here in the United States is broken.""I won't vote the party line, I've bucked the party line several times on several things whether it was abortion, whether it was the DACA kids, whether it's Obamacare... I've been willing to step up and lead as a leader here in Colorado solely based on good things for Colorado. That's what's gonna be important to me when I hit the U.S. Senate, but I also believe that it's time for us to sit down together. I'll do this with Senator Hickenlooper when I'm elected.""We need to start figuring out what it is we agree on, and we need to start moving those kind of policies forward, and that's how I'll be as a U.S. Senator."
Original source can be found here.
