By Susan de Castro McCann

Redstone Review editor

LYONS – U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D) talked to residents in Lyons after having lunch with the town board trustees and some of the town staff on April 9 at the Stone Cup coffee shop on the corner of Fifth Avenue and High Street.

Residents packed the coffee shop with standing room only to ask questions and listen to Polis try to unravel the political situation in Washington and find out what is going to happen in

Afghanistan, with the health care bill, the national debt, jobs and other topics.

Polis was a member of the education committee for the state of Colorado before he was elected to go to Washington representing the Second Congressional District.

He told the group, “It is hard to get bipartisan support for legislation in Congress. But all my bills are bipartisan. They all have a Republican co-sponsor.”

On health care Polis said, “It has been frustrating how partisan the environment is.” He added that some legislation will require bipartisanship and listed as examples the federal No Child Left Behind reform, immigration reform and regulation of financial institutions, which Congress is trying to tackle now. “I don’t think they’re going to happen at all unless it’s bipartisan,” he added.

Addressing major issues facing Congress, Polis said he was personally most interested and involved in health care. “I am on the education committee,” he said. “We are now writing the new framework for the next ten years. We are finding where the learning gaps are. No Child Left Behind left behind lots of problems.”

Financial regulatory reform needs to be created to prevent future bailouts and to prevent “too big to fail.” On immigration reform, Polis said, “I have not talked to one constituent who thinks we are not doing anything wrong (concerning immigration).”

Polis said he does not favor increasing our presence in the war (in Afghanistan) but said that the war seems to be going fairly well.

Residents asked about jobs. “We need jobs. We are looking at tax incentives for job creation,” he said. “New jobs will not be a where the old jobs were. Some of the money spent so far has prevented job loss especially in education. We increased our funding to schools by 20 percent, that’s not glamorous, but it did prevent job losses which would have been much greater with out that funding.”

On outsourcing jobs Polis said that this is a huge issue. He added that we need to do a good job and make America the best it can be. “We have to make sure that America is competitive.”

When asked about foreign students filling up the universities and taking their skills back home, Polis said that we have to fix immigration. “Students are usually not allowed to stay in America beyond their student visas,” he said. “We have to fix immigration so that foreign nationals can stay here after graduation and work and pay taxes in America.” He added that they could be creative contributors to our society.

Polis said he favored nuclear energy for other areas, but not in his district. He said his constituents do not want nuclear energy in their back yard.

Talking about cutting the national debt, Polis said, “We are in a mess fiscally in the short term and the long term,” he said. “A strong economy is one way to solve our debt, plus spending cuts and restructuring our liabilities.”

Polis added that we need a new energy policy. The last energy policy was decided by Vice President Dick Cheney in secret meetings with Enron. “We need to develop more renewable energy,” he said, adding that we also need to be tough on trade agreements.

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