Sen. Michael Bennet on High Housing Costs, His 38% Approval Rating, and Gov. Pol [1:33-6:22]

taco restaurant in the United States of America and certainly in Colorado. I think a lot of folks would agree with me. And I started to go there when I was the superintendent of schools in Denver. Well, let's talk about your run for governor. The primary isn't until June of next year. What's the biggest problem facing Colorado right now in your opinion? I think we're facing an affordability crisis in this state that is getting worse and worse and worse. And it is becoming devastating to people that are living here. There's not a county in Colorado where people feel like their kids are going to be able to afford to live there. There's not a there's not a there's not a neighborhood in Colorado where people feel like their kids are going to be able to afford to live there. And their kids worry that they're not going to be able to afford to live in Colorado. My kids worry that they're not going to be able to afford to live in Colorado. This isn't just a housing issue. This is a childcare issue. This is the cost of of auto registration. It's the cost of health care. It's the cost of health insurance. And it's our version, I think, in Colorado of the economic misery that has elected Donald Trump, not just once but twice in this country. And so I think we can sit here on our hands and color inside the lines and have another decade go by where the median family house price doubles again in Colorado or the cost of childcare goes from $20,000 on average to $40,000 or we can do something about it. And I think if we do something about it, we can restore our faith that our exercise and self-government actually can work. And if we can't do anything about it, we shouldn't be surprised if Trump is continues and continues and continues. He is a symptom of our problem. I think fundamentally as a nation, I blame him for many, many things, but getting elected is not one of those things. And I think if you don't understand him as a symptom, you're never gonna understand what we have to do to move him out of the way. Give us an idea to fix this affordability crisis. Well, I've already read the first issue. The first policy proposal I put out was a very comprehensive approach to housing. That's about building much more housing, trying to get to a place. Certainly to have a goal that nobody in Colorado has to pay more than 30% of their income for housing. That's gonna be obviously not something that's gonna be fixed overnight. But I think we can take steps today to build more housing, to build it more densely, to build it more affordability to give people more choice in the housing that they buy. And by the way, it's not just my kids I'm worried about here or young people in the state. It's also seniors who wanna have a place to move other than the place that they're in. I think that, well, I'm sorry, this is the problem we know. This is the problem Jared Polis talks about. These same words could have come out of his mouth and he's been working on it for years. What's an idea? What's something you'd do differently than him? Well, I think that first of all, I hope you'll look at the policy proposal that I've made. I listened to your announcement. I was kind of confused. Well, let me help you be confused. What, no, tell me what challenge. Well, I just, you said stuff like, I wanna unleash private industry. I wanna cut red tape. I wanna remove barriers. And I was like, what? How? What are the ones? What are the moves? What are the bills that he is not considered or proposed that you wanna do? Well, I think for example, first of all, this isn't just about bills. So I think that's a huge mistake. This is about propelling our entire state to have an aligned set of incentives and an aligned commitment to a set of outcomes that is gonna make it possible for our kids to afford housing here. One of the ideas that I included was using the state's balance sheet so that we can provide 30% more state-supported housing than the state government has been able to do so far. That's the idea that's totally different than what Jared Polis has proposed. I think my approach would be totally different as well. I've spent my entire career, my entire political career building coalitions and creating the kind of collaboration that we need to be able to align those incentives and to be able to much better align our,