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Bennet and O’Dea debate inflation and spending at CSU ahead of election day

By: Will Cornelius | The Surveyor | November 05, 2022 | Local News

Last Friday night, incumbent Democratic Senator Michael Bennet and Republican Senate nominee Joe O’Dea met at the Lory Student Center at Colorado State University in Fort Collins for the only televised debate in Colorado’s 2022 Senate race. The debate illustrated the divergent backgrounds and styles of the two men, and how they would represent Colorado in the Senate.

Bennet is a two-term incumbent Senator whose father was a diplomat and whose mother survived the Holocaust. A Yale law school graduate with public and private sector experience, Bennet keeps a low political profile and prides himself as a pragmatic moderate. In contrast, O’Dea was adopted and raised by a police officer father and a stay-at-home mother in Denver. He became a union carpenter at a young age and built a construction business that now employs 300 people.

The most prominent issue in the debate was inflation and the economy. O’Dea came out swinging by casting Bennet as a rubber stamp for President Joe Biden and the national Democratic party. He said congressional spending over the last two years was reckless and has left the country with record inflation. O’Dea specifically called out Bennet’s vote for the Inflation Reduction Act as misguided. “You just voted for an Inflation Reduction Act that even Bernie Sanders says doesn’t reduce inflation whatsoever,” he said.

Bennet defended his record and said he has fought back against the trickle-down economic policies in Washington that O’Dea supports. Bennet claimed that he will fight for tax relief for working families, while O’Dea wants tax cuts for only the wealthiest Americans. When Bennet was pushed by moderator Kyle Clark, of Denver 9News, about his support for the Inflation Reduction Act, Bennet stood by his vote citing the benefits for seniors in healthcare costs. Bennet also cited his long-standing support for expanding the child tax credit, stating that if it did not expire at the beginning of the year working families would be receiving an extra $450 a month.

O’Dea has made reducing government spending and bureaucracy a cornerstone of his campaign. When pressed about how far cutting spending needed to go, O’Dea pledged that he would not touch Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare, but that an expanding federal bureaucracy was not helping the economy. “When you grow a bureaucracy, like the Inflation Reduction Act does, and you put 80 billion dollars behind 87,000 IRS bureaucrats to come shakedown working Americans, you’re not making our economy function better,” O’Dea said.

The most explosive accusation came when O’Dea claimed that Bennet had only passed one bill during his 13 years in the Senate. “That’s completely untrue. This has been fact-checked, I’ve written 101 bills that have passed, 82 of those with a Republican co-sponsor,” Bennet retorted.

While it is true that Bennet has passed only one stand-alone bill during his time in the Senate, this measure can be misleading. Senators often work together or have sponsored legislation rolled into bigger pieces of legislation during the political horse-trading involved with passing bills in Congress. Other Senators who started in Congress around the same time as Bennet have similar numbers of stand-alone bills passed. Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia has had one stand-alone bill passed, and Republican Jim Risch of Idaho has had two. The claim was reiterated by O’Dea throughout the debate culminating in Bennet calling out O’Dea later in the debate. “You’re a liar Joe,” Bennet repeated three times while continually raising his voice.

Economic woes were not the only topic discussed. The fentanyl crisis was another point where the candidates had differing solutions. Bennet wants to force China to stop the flow of precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl into Mexico. He also wants Mexico to crack down on drug cartels that produce and transport the drug into the U.S. But according to O’Dea, the fentanyl problem is closer to home. “It’s coming straight up I-25,” he said. O’Dea said the solutions start with securing the southern border and fixing the broken immigration system. “We need to revamp the entire system, it doesn’t work. [We] got guys that have been working here five years, they can’t get through our system. It’s gotta stop,” he said.

Bennet followed up by recalling his work in 2013 as a part of the Gang of Eight, a group of bipartisan Senators that pushed an immigration reform bill that ultimately failed in Congress. He still thinks this is the best chance for immigration reform and doesn’t think ‘Trump’s medieval wall’ is the solution at the border. “I didn’t vote for a president who made it impossible for us to get anything done on immigration, Joe O’Dea voted for that president twice,” Bennet said. “Lotta talkin’, we’re hearin’ a lotta talkin’, you been doin’ talkin’ for 13 years and you haven’t gotten it done,” O’Dea responded.

The next hot-button topic was guns. Both candidates said that they would support universal background checks for all firearms at the federal level, something Colorado already has. Bennet supported raising the minimum age to buy an assault rifle from 18 to 21, but O’Dea did not. Neither candidate supported a federal 10-day waiting period for purchasing a firearm. When asked about a total assault rifle ban O’Dea said he would not support it, while Bennet gave a more elusive answer, “I think we’ve made enough of these weapons of war in this country.”

On the topic of abortion, both candidates had well-defined but different positions. Bennet stated that only one percent of abortions in the country are late-term, and they’re the “worst circumstances a mother could have.” He continued, “I don’t think Joe O’Dea should be in that hospital room with her when she’s gotta make that decision, I don’t think any politician should.” In response, O’Dea said, “I can’t vote for late-term abortion.” He said he supported a woman’s right to choose up to and including five months, a position in stark contrast with many other Republicans. Both candidates tried to cast the other’s abortion position as extreme.

One of the most pointed questions for Bennet was posed by O’Dea. O’Dea asked Bennet if he regretted the massive amounts of government spending that has happened in the last two years. “I regret the inflation that people are facing,” Bennet responded as he struggled to deflect the tough question from his opponent.

A recurring theme during the debate was the level of each candidate’s support for President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump. O’Dea repeatedly highlighted that Bennet votes with Biden’s policies 98% of the time. Bennet acknowledged his support for Biden but made clear that he has pushed back on policies he did not agree on.

Specifically, Biden’s recent trip to Saudi Arabia and his student loan forgiveness, which Bennet said should have been more targeted to the people who need it the most. Similarly, Bennet frequently tried to cast O’Dea as a pawn of Trump, despite Trump’s repudiation of O’Dea whom he labeled a RINO (Republican-in-name-only), in mid-October. O’Dea has stated that he voted for Trump twice but doesn’t want either Trump or Biden to be a nominee in 2024.

The candidates did agree on some areas of policy, specifically keeping Space Command in Colorado and the future of the Colorado River. Both were passionate about keeping Space Command in Colorado, but with different strategies. Bennet argued for continuing to pressure the White House and Congress to keep Space Command in Colorado by showing them that moving is costly and time-consuming. O’Dea said it was time for a new strategy and said, “I’m going to use my seat.” He proposed blocking legislation or appointments in a tightly controlled Senate to gain leverage in negotiations for keeping Space Command in Colorado.

With regards to the Colorado River, O’Dea wants the lower basin states, particularly California to step up. “I literally agree with almost every word Joe O’Dea just said,” Bennet said with a grin. Bennet had the same stance as O’Dea but also highlighted his work in the Senate to secure four billion dollars for water savings in the Inflation Reduction Act.

In closing remarks, the two candidates thanked each other and the audience, in what was a mostly civil and constructive debate. Bennet pleaded his case that he wants to build an economy that works for all and “not just the people at the very top.” O’Dea retold his own story, adopted at birth by a Denver cop and stay-at-home mom, he worked hard and built his own business from the ground up. “I want to make sure that every American has that same opportunity,” he said.

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