 And welcome to the Northwest Chamber Alliance's US Senate campaign event with Senator Cory Gardner. Thank you for joining us and thank you to Senator Gardner for taking a few minutes while you're in session. My name is Scott Cook. I'm the CEO at the Longmont Chamber and the Longmont Chamber is proud to host this event today in partnership with our Northwest Chamber Alliance. The Boulder Chamber will host a second event on October 15th with former Governor John Hickenlooper. The Northwest Chamber Alliance is a coalition of seven chambers and represents 3,600 businesses with 370,000 employees. I'd like to introduce my colleagues at the represented chambers and then I'll go over a few notes on the format of this event. So we'll go in alphabetical order. So we'll start with the Boulder Chamber. John in Boulder. Hi, John Tehr. I'm President and CEO of the Boulder Chamber and I first thank Scott for hosting this event today and I also just am really appreciative of the Senator being with us. So thank you. Great. Thanks John. And from Broomfield, Sam Taylor. Thank you very much. I too appreciate the Longmont Chamber. Senator Gardner, thank you for being here. Your staff has always been very accessible to the Broomfield Chamber and we really appreciate it. So thanks for being here. Exactly. Okay. And with the Latino Chamber of Boulder County, we have Pete Salas. Good morning, Senator Gardner. My name is Pete Salas and I'm the current Chairperson for the Latino Chamber of Commerce. We are a countywide chamber here and right now we have a virtual office but we represent a number of businesses, Latino professionals in Boulder County. Thank you very much for agreeing to appear with us this morning. It's much appreciated. Thank you. Thanks Pete. And in Superior, we have T.J. Sullivan. Senator Gardner, I'm T.J. Sullivan, the Executive Director up in Superior. It's good to be on a call with a healthy Senator. I hope you're doing well. All right and today we also have the Lafayette and Lewisville Chambers joining us, Vicki and Shelley. We're not able to join us but we appreciate their members. Many of their members are joining us for today's conversation. So we'll point them out as well. All right. Thank you. We will now do a quick review of our agenda and the ground rules for today. Today we'll start with an introduction and an update from Senator Gardner. After that, I will ask each Chamber Leader to ask one question from the membership. And then if time allows, we will take some questions from the audience submitted through the Q&A function. When we get to that part, I will ask Andrea from the Boulder Chamber to read aloud the questions. Please note, we are asking about all guests respect the time that each one of us is giving to this important conversation. The Q&A and chat is being actively monitored by Chamber staff and we will dismiss participants if we feel it's necessary. And then if we have unanswered questions, those will all be forwarded to the campaign for follow-up. And I should note also today that the event is being recorded. All right. Let's get started with the conversation. Corey Gardner is from Yuma and was elected to the Senate in 2014. He serves on the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and is Chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity. He has authored 10 bills that were signed into law, more than the entire Colorado Congressional delegation. He's been ranked the third most bipartisan member of the Senate by the nonprofit Luger Center in Washington. In the last few months, in addition to working with Governor Polis to secure hundreds of thousands of COVID tests and PPE through his relationships with his allies in Asia, Corey's Great American Outdoors Act was signed into law. This is the biggest public lands bill in 50 years and one of the largest investments in our parks in our nation's history. And most recently, Corey's 988 suicide hotline legislation passed Congress and will soon be signed into law. All right, Senator Gardner, thank you again for joining us today. Well, Scott, thank you for hosting us today and thanks to the Alliance for making this possible. It's great to be with you and your membership as well. As you know, Longmont, all of your communities hold a special place in my heart, but Longmont in particular, if you go on to Main Street in Longmont, there is a plaque on the sidewalk that it pays homage to the 19, I think it's 1919 Longmont High School National Championship football team. And if you look closely, there is a name on their rank and archer is my great grandfather. He was playing on that team in Longmont. And so every time we go to Longmont, I love to show the kids that at least somebody in their family was a good athlete. So it's kind of fun to see it. So thanks to all of you for your time today. Look, I've worked hard of the last six years to make sure that we're creating more opportunity, a better country, stronger jobs and greater lives enriched through the work that we all do for every single corner of this state. Six years ago when I was elected to the Senate, I talked about creating economic opportunity and we have done that. And prior to the pandemic, and I'll get into the pandemic, prior to the pandemic in Colorado between 2018 and 19, we saw some of the highest wage or household income growth in the country right here in the West. We saw 7% increases in household income as a result of our tax cuts. In 2017, we passed a series of tax cuts that creates opportunity zones across our state and our country. If you work in an opportunity zone, your wages are growing about 8% faster than they are if you're not in an opportunity zone. And many of these opportunity zones are in our rural areas and are economically distressed areas. So it's empowering people with better jobs. Our work on regulatory reform and allowing people to keep more money in their own pockets has resulted in nearly $2,000 household income increase, thanks to that effort. So we saw record low unemployment rates. In fact, I know we've talked many times at chamber meetings about how that was a challenge for such a low unemployment rate. But as a result, Colorado has been leading the country when it comes to jobs, investments, and innovation. And I've been honored to help be a part of that and to help Colorado innovators, entrepreneurs, and communities thrive to get to where we are, the greatest states in this United States. And that was before the pandemic. And the pandemic has created new pressures on all of us. And we have to get back to that record of success. Through the pandemic, there are three things that I have focused on. Number one is making sure that we address the health crisis itself, flattening the curve, stopping the spread. It's why I supported efforts to increase funding for vaccines and therapies and treatments and personal protective equipment, stockpiles, and new ways to provide treatment to people across this country. It's why the second thing, of course, we have to do is to make sure that we are helping individuals who have lost their jobs, who've seen hours reduced. And that's why I supported extending unemployment benefits. That's why I supported most recently legislation to extend unemployment benefits through the end of the year. And I know there are people who say that, you know, that's keeping people out of the workforce, but we have to help people. We make sure that it's not a distance in it, but we have to make sure that we are helping everyone be able to make ends meet, whether that's rent, whether that's their mortgage, whether that's their car payments, we have to make sure that we take care of people. The third thing, of course, the lens that I've filtered all my actions through is making sure that we help businesses so that we can keep their doors open, that we can keep people hired and we're able to survive through this. You know, this isn't an instance where a restaurant was serving bad food and they closed. It's not an instance where a hotel had a dirty room and nobody wanted to go to it. No, this is where our mayors and our governor and the president said, you're going to socially distance, you're going to shut down, you're going to reduce capacity out of love for our community to stop the spread of the virus. And that means we have to be there to get our country back open again and back to work. And that's exactly what I continue to do. It's why I was one of the chief proponents and developers of the Paycheck Protection Program. It's why I want to expand the Paycheck Protection Program to get another draw on that loan to continue to help businesses. We've put over $10 billion into Colorado through the Paycheck Protection Program. It saved hundreds of thousands of employees and we need to make sure that that work continues along with help for child care assistance, along with help for education dollars in local community and state and local government funding. I continue to push for those. Scott, you mentioned at the very beginning of the call that I have passed more legislation into law than the entire Colorado congressional delegation combined. That's true. The Great American Outdoors Act has been described as the holy grail of conservation measures, a great bipartisan victory for the American people that will create thousands of jobs redoing trails, working on our campgrounds and fixing our visitor centers across our forests and national parks. It's the 988 bill that you just described we lose tragically in Colorado, somebody every seven hours death by suicide. And just like you'd call 911 to report a fire, you can call 988 for that mental health need to prevent and to reach somebody to prevent that suicide. It will have specialized veterans care. It focuses on how do we reach our LGBTQ community to make sure that they are receiving help because of the disproportionate effect that they have in our suicide tragedies across this country. So we need to make sure that we are focused on those results. I'm the third most bipartisan member of the United States Senate for a reason because I believe that when you start with Republican and Democrat support, when you start with it, you end with it as well. If you start with only Democrat or only Republican support at the beginning, it becomes more and more difficult to get there by the end. You can do it, but why not start with the very beginning, the ground entry Republican and Democrat supporting measures for the betterment of this country? Look, I'm going to fight for every nook and cranny of this state. I live in a tiny town in the eastern plains of Colorado. In fact, I'm using the home office today in a house that once belonged to my great-grandparents. We have a family business here. We sell farm equipment. I learned about business there. I learned what it takes to create jobs and opportunity. I learned about the needs of others and how we can serve others so they can empower our communities. We're going to get through this pandemic together. We're going to rise above it together. In Colorado, we always look to that great horizon. We always look to Long's Peak and see what's next and beyond so that we can get to that next great opportunity. Never looking back. I was raised to believe that there is opportunity and optimism in every veil and valley, and we have to work hard together to find it, but that's what Colorado does. It's an honor to be with all of you as we get through this together, as we create new opportunities together, and as we fight for all four corners of our state to succeed. So Scott, thanks. I'm looking forward to your questions. Okay, great. Thank you, Senator. We'll go into alphabetical order again and take questions from each of the leadership at the leadership at each chamber. So we'll start with John Thayer and Boulder. Yes, Senator. First of all, I appreciate your comments about bipartisanship and obviously the efforts around addressing the pandemic, which is critical to getting our economy up and running. But I will say there's another issue that is of great importance to our innovation economy, and that is immigration and some of the challenges that we've faced in reaching a bipartisan solution around how to better open the gates to the types of leadership and innovators that we need in our businesses to drive our economy. So just wondering, as you're approaching now, then going forward to seeking a second term, what is your proposal and vision for improving our immigration system? Yeah, thank you, Richard. If you think about it, most of us came to Colorado or to the United States from somewhere else, and I oftentimes think about what I would do if my family was somewhere else around the globe, anywhere else but the United States, that I would do everything in my power to get my family into this great country for the opportunities that it stands for, the values that we share. No matter where I was, I'd be doing everything I could to be here. So recognizing that, recognizing that we are a nation of immigrants, that we can empower the best of innovations when we draw those brightest minds here, that we are made richer in our lives, in our communities, in our schools, in our arts, in our faith, and everything about us by having that diversity of community around us, how do we have an immigration system that works? Here's what we need to do. Number one, if you go back several years ago, I worked closely with Senator Bennett from Colorado to create a bipartisan gang of six proposal that brought elements of the DREAM Act together, to pass the DREAM Act, to put our young children on that path to citizenship because they were brought here through no fault of their own at a very young age. Let's fix that, let's make it right. We put money into border security so that we can have the judges and the fixes at the border so we avoid the tragedies that we've seen under the Obama and Trump administrations. So that we make sure that we have the necessary resources to make our entry and exit systems, entry exit systems work and our visas work. We have 42 percent of the people who are here without documentation in the country who overstayed a visa. Let's fix that, we're smart, we know how to do it. During that immigration debate on the floor of the United States Senate, I was the only Republican who voted for every single immigration reform, whether it was a Democrat reform or a Republican reform or the bipartisan proposal that we brought forward with the gang of six idea, we have to make this system work. As a result of my immigration proposals that would fix the exit entry system, pass the DREAM Act, address security, fix the asylum issues, stop family separation, under those ideas I received an award from the National Immigration Forum called the Courage to Lead Award and I received that award standing next to the second highest ranking Democrat in the United States Senate, Dick Durbin. Senator Durbin from Illinois said about me that takes courage to be a Republican and do what I did and I think that's important that we find those bipartisan solutions to immigration, that's what I fought for, that's what I stood for and that's what I will continue to seek to achieve, bring both people, both the sides of the aisle together, so that people are first and we have that great idea of a nation of immigrants, a nation of laws, but one that comes together to make our country better than ever. All right, we'll next go to Ruth Bills, Sam Taylor. Do you have a question? Yes, I do. Senator Gardner, thank you very much. Really appreciate your opening comments, especially your support of the extended unemployment benefits. As Scott mentioned in the opening of the Northwest Chamber Alliance, we represent over 300,000 employees, somewhat less since March because of COVID. Many of these people are unemployed through no fault of their own, not even the business at fault. As you pointed out, a lot of hotels, they don't need the staff. A lot of the restaurants are unable to have the people. Broomfield is not in the bolder area when it comes to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We're in the Denver, Aurora, Broomfield areas, what it's called, and our employment numbers are still down 4.6% from early March. I mean that's much better than the 10% we were down in April, but it's still really high and many economists are predicting it's going to go back up as the cold weather hits. If you were crafting the next stimulus bill all by yourself with not a single person putting in and you knew it would pass, what would you do for extended unemployment benefits and how much extra federal money would you put into those per week? Sam, thank you very much. I think we have to look at this instance and recognize the help that people need. I mean there are people who are hurting, people who've put their lives, their blood, their sweat, their tears into their families, their homes, their businesses and they've seen it just been wiped out and they want to work, they want to be able to be back in it and we have to make sure that they can. And so, you know, I think oftentimes about something that I heard Jay Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, say to me in a conversation I had about what tools we needed to to create and secure so that we get through this and he said, you know, at the end of the year if you look back and you say, gee whiz, the economy is fantastic, unemployment is the lowest it's been and jobs are being created left and right, but I wish we wouldn't have spent that much money what a great thing that would have been. But if we look back at that moment and say gee the economy still isn't moving and people still aren't at work and people are hurting and I wish we would have spent more, that is a bad, bad, bad recipe for moving forward. So we need to make sure that we get people forward. So what would I do? Number one, I'm going to ask my staff who is on this call to send everyone a link and maybe they can do it either now or later. In April, April 16th, I believe it was, I signed a letter with Senator Bennett and Governor Polis, a joint letter between the three of us outlining the things that we needed to continue to do to provide stimulus, to provide help for our economy. It included continued support for businesses, it included support for underserved and unserved businesses, getting minority businesses access to paycheck protection, program loans and other resources. It included assistance to Medicaid and just the other day I convinced the White House to extend the public healthy emergency so that we can continue the expanded Medicaid benefits through the pandemic. You know we need help for state and local governments, additional dollars for state local governments with flexibility to be used for those expenses, to put additional dollars into education needs, to put additional dollars into nutritional needs for our families, to provide additional benefits on unemployment. What does that look like? What I just supported was a measure that would extend unemployment benefits through the end of the year. That's the expanded unemployment benefits through the end of the year. I support that and we may need to look at that and say you know what we're going to have to do more as we go forward. Like I said, we're not going to create a disincentive to work, we're going to make sure that people are active, productive part of our economy. We need this next package to have that paycheck protection program expansion in it. We need to make sure that people can get a second loan on it and yeah we ought to look at revenues because if you're doing better than you ever have you probably don't need that paycheck protection program loan but there's a lot of businesses that are and you know what let's help them, let's find that targeted relief. We need dollars to continue on the vaccine side, we need dollars to continue on the research side, the personal protective equipment side, so all of that needs to be in this. Now we just had a vote a couple of weeks ago on the floor of the Senate that would have provided well over a hundred billion dollars for education which is more than the the House bill had proposed. It provided dollars, I think 10 billion dollars for the U.S. Post Office. It provided dollars for child care, billions for child care needs because you have parents who are struggling to get to work and if their kids are at school that's one thing but if they're online learning at home that's another thing and so we need to provide some help there. It provided dollars for vaccines, it provided dollars for personal protective equipment, it would have expanded the unemployment benefits through the end of the year, it would have opened up expanded the paycheck protection program and more and so that would have had some liability precautions in there as well. Look that bill had more than a majority of support, it had 52 votes for it, so more than a majority necessary. Unfortunately there was a filibuster against it and it took 60 votes to pass it because there was a filibuster against it, so it fell eight votes shy of passing. I hope we can find those eight votes, I hope that people will be willing. I realize that everything I laid out to you that I want, not everything that I want is in that bill but I realize that providing unemployment benefits to people now, providing help and relief to businesses now, providing billions of dollars in education now matters and that we should pass it, get through and start working on the next thing. There is no alpha and omega coronavirus bill that is going to be the end all be all, you never need to look at it again. We're going to have to keep working on this for years to come. Let's help now and continue to help going forward, so thank you very much for the question. Thank you. Thank you Sam and thank you Senator. We'll next go to Pete Salas at the Latino Chamber. Thank you again Senator Garner. I have so many questions but I'm going to limit it to a business question. There are senators, there are over five million small business, small Latino businesses in our country including thousands here in Colorado. There are over 4,800 here in Boulder County and the question I have is what are you doing to ensure that these businesses are benefiting from federal estate contracts and given the perceived inequities in the business community around distribution of federal funds to minority businesses? Yeah absolutely, so I'm going to talk right now about the contracting then remind me to talk to you about the coronavirus relief packages too because I think that goes into part of this. So I have a group of people in Colorado Springs that are very familiar with government contracting issues that have created sort of a working group to help reach out across the state of Colorado to small businesses and minority businesses underrepresented communities to help gain access to to contracting with the federal government. Whether that's the Defense Department, whether that's the Commerce Department or others really trying to get them into the door breaking down barriers and you know getting on the phone and talking to the federal agencies about hey can you can you spend some time visiting with this individual, this organization, this business and using their expertise because they have so much experience on contracting to really help cut through that challenge that a small business has when it comes to federal contracting and especially minority owned businesses when it comes to it. So we're constantly looking at ways to reduce the red tape and the and some of the ingrained inertia against small business access to those contracts and trying to tear down those barriers so that we can get more into contract signed minority owned businesses you know small businesses across the state of Colorado. But it's also sort of emblematic the work that we had to do with the coronavirus relief. You know when the Paycheck Protection program went out it was limited to basically banks and you know the loans through the SBA program the 7A kind of lenders and so we worked hard to make sure that that we got nontraditional lenders into the program as well. So CDFI lenders, CDC lenders for communities that were either unbanked underbanked or didn't have a traditional banking relationship to make sure that minority owned businesses areas that were less served had access and people who were providing that kind of economic relief and economic opportunity. And so really that kind of ties in with the same work we're doing on the contracting side to get more people involved to to get into that contracting. That's what I'm going to continue to do when we need to make sure that we expand those opportunities as well. Opportunity zones create additional additional hope for us to to get into under undeveloped underdeveloped areas economically distressed areas to make sure that we have more investments. Seventy some billion dollars now going into those opportunity zones. We have a lot of focus on the real estate side of Opportunity Zones and that's good because it's helping with you know affordable housing issues but we also now need to help it on the job creation side as well in Opportunity Zones. And I think that will help too for small business and minority owned businesses. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks. Great thanks Pete. We will next move to the Superior Chamber and TJ Sullivan. Senator Gardner just since we started this phone call the Defense Department announced the General Mark Milley Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff along with several of the Pentagon's most senior uniformed leaders are being quarantined after being exposed to the coronavirus. Reports are the West Wing is a ghost town today and we have senators several what three four senators that are either quarantined or have been exposed to COVID. My question is is your sense that we are moving into a phase where this coronavirus pandemic is actually affecting our country's ability to to operate effectively particularly around our national security apparatus. Are we entering a new zone where we need to be concerned about that? No look our country is strong and our leadership is strong and our military is is is vastly vastly prepared for this. They have had contingencies in place long before coronavirus and certainly at the very beginning of this pandemic they began to create national security directives and efforts within the Department of Defense and the White House to plan for contingencies when top leaders may be quarantined or indeed themselves be tested positive for this and so but obviously we have to do more when it comes to preparing the country and the state and our nation for and through this pandemic and whatever pandemic comes again because it will. So there's a couple things that we need to build on right now. Number one we need additional relief that we have talked about here that is going to help our men and women in uniform respond that's going to help our our federal workforce respond that's certainly going to help our states and all the citizens of this country. Number two we need to make sure that we pass legislation that I've introduced along with Senator Bennett my colleague from Colorado a bill called the Test Act. The Test Act is a national plan for diagnostics and testing that coordinates with local public health departments states and federal government to identify hot spots before they become outbreaks. We need that plan implemented that is in some of the legislation that we have had in the Senate it's been incorporated in there we need to get that bill passed as soon as possible. We need to continue the efforts we have on vaccinations treatments and therapies. You can see the reports today that that you know about you know the advancements that we have made and treatments and therapies that was you know steroids for breathing conditions the blood thinners for the clotting conditions the way that people are positioned if they if they have to go to the hospital on a ventilator the outcomes of being in a prone position the swimmer's position versus on their back and how better the treatment results are in that case remdesivir that's the Ebola antiviral drug that has had significant shown significant promise throughout the country in that treatment those all things that matters in terms of how we make sure the government is able to respond for the people number one but also to keep itself in operation. But look this this country has been through a number of challenges before and this is something unlike we've seen in our lifetime but I am confident that our people and our nation will get through this and I'll obviously if that news is broke I had not seen that during this this call but I'll make sure that I check into that. I just spoke yesterday to secretary esper the department of defense secretary we were talking about space command we were talking about some air force academy issues and then we got into discuss some discussions about force protection efforts you know force protection efforts yes it means making sure that we protect the the people on base and you know whether somebody trying to do harm them but it's also their health and what we are doing on the front lines of health for our men and women in uniform that is begins with the the very new entrance into enlistee into the military to the most senior or four stars that we have representing our country. All right thanks TJ and the senator we'll now go to Andrea. Andrea I can see some of the chat I'm not sure if I can see all of it so do we have any questions that have come in from from the audience. Yeah Scott we have some questions that have been asked by some members of our business community and I'll go ahead and ask each one of those to senator Gardner. Senator Gardner one question we have from a small business owner is that one of the greatest challenges they face is the cost and uncertainty around health insurance. Health insurance costs are inhibiting the competitiveness of American workers and employers what are you doing to ensure health care is accessible and affordable. Well thank you I can remember several years back when at the at the implement dealership that we had I think it was a seventy thousand dollar year-to-year increase in our health insurance costs and we don't have hundreds of employees we have dozens at any given time or just a dozen depending on how good the year is and you know that challenge that seventy thousand dollars that we knew was important for our employees but it also was one less piece of equipment that we can invest in for expansion of the business or one less person that we could hire for investing into the business so we have to make sure that we that we increase the quality of care and we decrease the cost of care there are two things that that republicans and democrats agree on number one we will always and make sure we always have coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and number two we have to recognize the need to fix what we got and to actually put something in place that is going to work to drive down the cost of health care so how do we do that number one we need a we need a patient-centered health care system between the patient and their doctor we need to have a reinsurance system set up risk pool set up to drive down the cost of health care for those high cost individuals making sure that they have affordable care but also making sure that insurance stays affordable for everyone we need more competition in colorado and there are 22 counties that only have one provider to choose from i worked with governor polis to get a waiver for the state on reinsurance to help drive down cost i eliminated the health insurance tax that will save individuals families in colorado hundreds of dollars of year in their health insurance costs we need association health plans for me we sell red tractors our neighbors sell green tractors why can't we have a common insurance policy because we all have sales people we have service people and we have you know the parts managers and service managers they're basically doing the same thing ones green ones red why can't we have one insurance policy through an association that would help us work on that we need liability reforms it's estimated that as much as 25 percent of our health care costs are unnecessary procedures and so let's figure out a way to do that let's address technology in a way that empowers individuals to make better choices for their health care that allows them to shop using an iphone based on the best outcome at the best price and we can do that through health savings accounts and through business and employer settings and we can also make sure that we have price transparency if you look right now at a car you can go down to any car dealership how much does this forward cost at this dealership how much does it cost at that dealership and you know we ought to be able to know the same thing on health care now the big difference though in you know both both republics and democrats are going to cover people with pre-existing conditions both want something better than what we have the differences in what you what what that new idea looks like my idea is that patient-centered health care approach the alternative is a is a government-run system a public options sometimes a government-run system is called or medicare for all it all results in the same things in fact they admit that it ends up basically in the government taking it over completely that would devastate our rural hospitals it would result in a 23 hundred dollar increase in payroll taxes and it would eliminate 178 million people from the insurance they get through their employer 178 million people would lose their insurance through their employer if they succeed i don't think that that is a recipe for success so those are just a few of the highlights of things that we need to do and a warning about some of the the ideas out there as a replacement thank you senator gardener the next question is more along the lines of race and equity in the person who submit asks recently city group released a study that found the u.s. has lost about 16 trillion from the gdp due to over the last 20 years race-based inequalities what are your plans to address race based inequalities and what can you do from your seat in congress well thank you very much for that i you know as we watched this summer we our souls and lives were touched in ways that perhaps that they never had been before as we watched the murder of george floyd in real time over and over again and we cannot let that moment be forgotten and nothing done when it comes to inequality injustice the unequal application of the law and as it relates to an economic question the fact that you have economic differences and inequities need to and must be addressed so what we have to do is is some of what we've put in place and what needs to be done let's get into that number one we have now mandatory mandatory funding for historically black colleges and universities we have this is the first time it's ever been mandatory we just passed that this past congress this past year and that's going to provide more opportunities for for our communities of color across this country too we have to increase funding and opportunities for hispanic serving institutions we've had we we need to continue the focus on that education opportunity number three we have provided opportunity zones that i talked about before that are particularly focused on distressed economic areas many in predominant minority communities if you are a worker one of the lowest wage earners in this country your wages are growing at about eight percent faster than that non-opportunity zone worker that is creating new opportunities for many minority communities across the country that is incredibly important that we continue that we've also seen that we need to make sure that we're building on the successes of the 2017 tax cuts if you look at the 2017 tax cuts and the economic progress we had prior to the pandemic if you look at hispanic families and you look at african-american families hispanic and african-american families wealth grew 65 and 33 percent as as a result of the work that we have done so we need to continue that growth we saw every sector of our wealth in this country grow but it was 33 percent african-american 65 percent hispanic communities three percent for the white communities obviously the white community started at a higher level we need to make sure that that growth continues in the non-white communities so that we can have that equality that is created we need educational opportunities we need more more opportunities for scholarships and grants and student loan provisions those are just a few of the things that we can do you know and when it comes to things like police reform i supported a measure that senator tim scott put forward on the floor of the senate that would start applying those basic ideas that we all know we need to do to follow the tracking systems of shootings and unequal application of the law how we can make sure that we investigate and stop that the chronic hold kinds of things the chronic hold kind of things that we've done changes at the state level on those police reform means so that we prevent those tragedies from happening so i know i combine both the some of the the larger racial issues that we've seen over this past year along with the economic issues but all of them need to be addressed and those are just again a few of the ideas that we have to work together to make sure that we have opportunity truly opportunity for all in this country thank you senator gardener another question that i am assuming all the chamber executives gathered here today are wondering about is the funding that organizations especially membership-based organizations have been waiting for congress chambers are doing a lot of work in their communities to spearhead the economic recovery efforts to help the small businesses thrive and we're still waiting for some kind of congressional support to keep organizations such as ours going and keeping our communities vibrant what can you do to help membership-based organizations on the 501c6 funding that's still being waited upon yeah absolutely you think about like the direct marketing organizations you think about chamber of commerce organizations you think about the work and the role that you play the trade associations like the restaurant association and i mean my gosh not every business has a major marketing firm that can you know shift gears and figure out what to do not every business has the legal department that's going to figure out how to get through a i you know eidl loan or paycheck protection application so you know we need to make sure that those chambers succeed those trade organizations succeed because you're the ones that are helping guide small businesses to the resources and through the effort that it takes to actually obtain those resources so i commend you for the work that you have done in getting your membership connected with banks and lenders and other resources they need to help get through this together so i am a sponsor of legislation that would expand these opportunities the paycheck protection program and others to all non-profits particularly c6s when the cares act was introduced back in march it actually did apply to all non-profits at least i think it applied to everyone and then when it passed for whatever reason that was changed and that's where that restriction came in and so we did have some legislation on the floor that would have opened it up to to other organizations outside of that unfortunately it fell shy of the votes that we needed to get it done but it had more than enough to pass had it not been filibustered we need to continue to fight to get that done because your role is saving businesses each and every day thank you that's encouraging and we'll keep it up we just need congress to help us out and we're glad that there you'll be there to uh to help us with that or that you're there today um senator gardener we have a question um coming in from the bolter county farmers and the bolter county farmers are asking relief funds for farmers have primarily benefited large industrial operations will you help direct relief to smaller operations in our communities by sponsoring a companion bill to the local farmer act introduced in the house yes so i'll take a look at the local farmer act and uh i spoke to secretary prudu about relief issues in colorado in general a couple things that colorado is affected by a lot of the relief seem to be more midwest and south based and uh you know we need to make sure that that is getting all the way to to our states like colorado and in the west and you know one of my concerns whenever you have a secretary of agriculture or a chair person of a senate or house ad committee their regional perspective can really define how they apply the policies when it comes to agriculture if you have a cotton or corn or soybean base then perhaps you don't know as much about wheat or vegetable farming or some of the other produce opportunities we have in colorado and so so you know that's a conversation i've long had with secretary prudu produce somebody who is more southern agricultural focused the same thing with with the forest service part of usda so uh i have talked to secretary prudu about these relief efforts making sure it's getting to small farms not just big farms i'll take a look at the bill that you talked about but you know i'm the only you know i'm the only member of colorado's statewide delegation i'm the only statewide elected official in colorado who lives in rural colorado i'm the only statewide elected official who has an agriculture background uh right now uh and that lives in rural colorado that has a it lives in a farming community with big farms small farms and everywhere in between and agriculture remains the cornerstone of our economy we have to make sure that it's thriving in boulder county we have to make sure it's thriving in back of county and we have to make sure that it's thriving across all four corners of our state all right two more questions we have one from um the audience and then one from pete salas at the latino chamber and then i'll turn it back to scott cook uh from the audience last question is there has been unprecedented spending by federal government on virus related efforts this is burdening future generations with debt how do you plan to get spending down budgets balanced also do you see that the virus spending will dictate future cuts in other important areas uh defense for example well a couple things uh you know number one we had a a sort of structural debt crisis before the pandemic and it certainly didn't get made easier by the pandemic but like i mentioned before if we sit back in january and wish we would have done more to provide relief it's too late we have to do the relief now to get our economy to the position where we say thank god we got through this together with a thriving economy again and we can and we will do that with the measures that we have talked about today but we have to address that structural debt you know there are economists out there who believe that you know that this is a creative spending but no matter what and however you want to categorize it who economists what economist says what we have to address it so there's several things we need to do number one i firmly believe in a constitutional balanced budget amendment we have to have it there will be exceptions obviously for emergencies like now number two we need to make sure that we have a a tax policy regulatory environment that drives innovation and entrepreneurship and investments if you think about the tax cuts that we have it brought trillion plus dollars from overseas back into investments into this country i talked about the household wage growth that we saw as a result of those tax cuts that needs to continue but we have to ramp up even more our economic growth because we cannot cut or tax our way out of this deficit and debt crisis we growth economic growth is key and that's what we have to do is have those pro-growth economic policies like we've never seen before in order to get our economy back on this we have to cut spending where it makes sense we're going to protect Medicaid we're going to protect social security we're going to protect Medicare but we have to bring in health care reforms to make sure that we're lowering those costs like we've talked about today we also have to make sure that we we cut spending where it makes sense every year there's a report from the GAO that talks about duplicative government spending billions of dollars where one office is doing the same exact thing as another office i've got legislation with a democrat cosponsor gary peters of michigan to force congressional committees to actually look at the government duplication in spending that would save billions and billions of dollars uh so so those are just a few of the things that we need to do now um if you don't address this challenge the spending that we have now will affect everything just as the spending pride this will affect everything because two-thirds of our budget right now is on autopilot mandatory spending one-third of our budget is discretionary meaning that congress has day-to-day control over it but even at its even taking us out the pandemic that gap was closing that one-third was disappearing and eventually it would have been all mandatory spending leaving nothing for roads and transportation and agriculture and education so we have to address it now otherwise it will crowd into spending that we all know is very important like expanding infrastructure which we desperately need to do thank you senator gardener and pete tells from the latino chamber pete is still there yeah i just said i was on mute senator gardener the president has uh uh decided to eliminate basically what our cultural competency classes for federal employees one of the reasons he gives is that they are racist my question is do you believe that cultural competency classes for federal employees are racist and do you support his position as such well thank you for the question i need we need to make sure that we have culturally competent federal employees we don't need to have anti-american lessons taught i i think there's a review of that to make sure that that's not the case so absolutely move forward with cultural competence but do so in a way that's pro-american not anti-american and i believe that any kind of study to review that ought to make that determination so let's have cultural competence but let's make sure that it's pro-american and that's i think what what everybody would agree with senator gardener um i'm being told that we have time for another question and one that's come in through the uh the q and a's that on a topic we haven't addressed yet is climate change um the person asked right now we are currently seeing increased fires not only in colorado but across the us west this has and will continue to significantly disrupt the supply chain what are you doing to address climate change yeah climate change obviously climate change is real and there's no doubt that the you know global industrial activity has impacted our climate uh and so just i'll give you one example that through the natural resources defense council uh the nr dc said that my bill the great american outdoors act addresses two of our most important issues facing the country number one climate change number two biodiversity of wildlife so that is one idea that nr dc itself is recognized as an important step toward addressing climate change i've also worked hard to make sure that we are increasing funding and we've actually i've led the increase of nearly 50 percent at the national renewable energy laboratory uh in golden colorado for clean energy and investments in battery storage technologies and it is remarkable the work that they have done the grid that's not too far away from boulder the flat irons campus there where they have that that that micro grid that includes the the wind turbine it includes the batteries tied in it includes a whole mox well in real life setup for how we can integrate an economy into a clean energy future so we've increased that funding by nearly 50 percent there i've also been focusing on how we make our our country more energy efficient i've introduced legislation to provide funding and investment tax credits for battery storage i led the fight to preserve the production tax credits for solar and wind in our 2017 tax pets that's all going to go toward reducing emissions and on the energy saving side i've led the the effort to save about four to five billion dollars in in utility costs for the taxpayers by making our government buildings more if energy efficient there's billions and billions more that we can do creating private sector jobs reducing the burden of the taxpayers by reducing their energy costs that they paid their federal buildings and it endures obviously in less emissions that are being introduced that's critically important as those investments so that's what i continue to do i helped form the energy efficiency caucus in the senate and the house excuse me in the house the performance contracting side i've been part of a bipartisan working group in the senate to address climate change and our environmental needs but again you look at something like the great american outdoors act the biggest infusion of investment into our outdoors in the country's history a teddy roosevelt like accomplishment i think is going to go leaps and bounds to help us address some of these most pressing environmental needs thank you senator gardener looks like we have one more question from john tayer then i will turn it back to scott cook and if we have time for any issues that have not been raised um that's it from our interactive part with our um our members senator you alluded to this issue but one that's really important to our businesses and that is transportation infrastructure i mean you can just look at i-70 during the weekends or just a traffic congestion into boulder county on us 36 and know that that's a crying need for our community for investment so i'm wondering what plans would you have going forward for investment in transportation infrastructure and also very importantly how would you pay for that yeah so thank you for that for the last several years i brought back hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure funding to colorado it's been put to use on highway 36 it's been put to use on the expansion of i-25 north i learned that i-25 north expansion means a different thing for four collins than and longmont and boulder than it does colorado springs both of them say i-25 north expansion and we've helped fund both i-25 north expansions from colorado springs and uh from uh from you know brighten up to the four collins area that needs in between obviously certainly the money that we put into the highway 36 corridor mass transit needs and most recently funded the the grant for the roaring for transit authority up the mountains which is the largest rural mass transit authority in the country and so we need to have it all we need to have highways and bridges we need to have roads and bridges we need to have mass transit systems light rail and other ideas put together and make it all work for everyone so that's what we have folks on here here's how i think we need to move forward the senate has passed a bipartisan highway reauthorization out of the epw committee past unanimous republicans and democrats we need to get that bill passed as soon as possible we also need a bigger broader infrastructure package that is put to work how do you fund it i mean there's a number of ways that people will consider funding it one of the ways is to use the the dollars coming in from overseas for an infrastructure bank the trillions of dollars that we can put back into use to develop billions of dollars that we can go forward with that's one idea you have other ideas that people are going to be putting forward i think the u.s chamber of commerce wants the congress to consider a a gas tax i don't know if there's the support for this congress i doubt that there is but those are opportunities that we need to work on for a broader infrastructure package number one we need it in colorado uh because of the economic just that the population growth we've seen in the economic opportunities that we need to continue to enjoy i did help change the law passed legislation to make colorado more competitive for grants based on the number of freight and cargo traffic in a state we have a lot so it makes us you know a little bit more eligible for funding and population growth so it makes us based on our population growth more more opportunities for us to actually get those dollars brought back to to colorado we need to continue focusing on our drinking water systems our wastewater systems and broadband infrastructure as well for unserved and underserved areas that's part of our infrastructure needs i've got a bill that would allow the FCC to advance fund using spectrum auction proceeds about eight billion dollars worth of money into broadband deployments and that would help us all economically but that infrastructure component is real right now we have a highway system that is you know one out of every five miles i think is is terrible uh condition overall i think it's rated c or less we have to do better than that if we're going to continue to attract the best business and economic opportunities across the country all right thank you john and all of our chambers and our alliance are doing a lot on transportation so we appreciate that senator we are a bit over time so we thank you for the added time i think we had 45 minutes for we're past that now is there anything else that you would like to to share with us that was not we went through quite a few different topics today and a number of different questions but is there anything else that you would like to share with our chamber group well yeah certainly you know one of the other bills that i passed was a bill called the american innovation and competitiveness act and if you think about the work that is done in the areas that your chambers represent a lot of research a lot of science a lot of engineering takes place basic research takes place this bill dramatically increased authorization funding for the national science foundation and this of course which has a huge presence in boulder and it focuses on getting more minority students underserved underrepresented communities into the stem fields it helped you know in fact one of the one of the scientists leading scientists that we worked with to pass the american innovation and competitiveness act actually said that this bill made science bipartisan again so i'm excited to continue that work of bringing people together for the opportunities that you that you have created in some of the greatest communities in the state and because we know we already have the greatest state in the country they're the greatest communities in the country as well so thank you for the work that you do the jobs that you create the communities that you represent we're going to get through our challenges by sticking together and thanks for being a partner in that effort scott thanks very much for the time today thank you very much senator and i want to thank thank you for your service to colorado and to our country especially during this time i also want to thank all of our partner chambers and all of the people that joined us this morning so thank you for your support of your local chamber and for the northwest chamber alliance if you did submit questions that were unanswered andrea is taking care of those and those will be sent to the campaign and the senator will answer those so we'll get that done for you i also mentioned that ballots will be out very soon of course and so this is a reminder from your northwest chamber alliance partners to get out there and vote well i'd be remiss to say i'd be honored to earn your vote so thank you very much there you go thank you senator and thank you everyone for joining us today