WEBVTT
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Hello, my name is Mark Basley, and I am running for United States Senate from Colorado.
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Why are you seeking this office and what experience or perspective would you bring to the position?
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You know, I'm looking to fulfill the challenge given us by uh Benjamin Franklin as he was emerging from uh the writing of the Constitution, and uh he was asked by someone in the crowd, hey, what kind of government have you given us?
00:00:25.359 --> 00:00:29.600
And he said, uh, a republic, ma'am, if you can keep it.
00:00:29.920 --> 00:00:38.399
So uh keeping the republic is a challenge that uh has uh, well, we've we've pulled it off so far in this first 250 years.
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Um, I'd like to see it continue for the next 250 years as well.
00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:44.479
So keeping the republic is my goal.
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And that's uh that's trying to adhere to those American founding principles established in the mission statement, as I call it, the founding uh document of our country, which is uh the Declaration of Independence.
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The perspective that I bring is one of uh having an international upbringing, uh having lived outside of the United States uh much of my life, Puerto Rico and South Africa.
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And that's what made me realize the exceptional nature of uh of the United States.
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And then from a professional standpoint, um, I'm an aerospace engineer by by profession, so um I uh can bring that.
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Uh aerospace is a big deal in Colorado, hundreds of thousands of jobs, and a lot of big businesses are resident in Colorado.
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We have a lot of um of military bases, and so that's uh an important representation for Colorado to have in Washington, D.C.
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If elected, what would be your main priority while in office and what steps would you take toward accomplishing it?
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Um, you know, there's uh um a monument to my hero, my political hero in Washington, D.C.
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Monument to uh Thomas Jefferson.
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I keep a little mini statue, about a nine-inch uh bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson on my uh state senate desk in the in the Capitol in Denver.
00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:16.960
And uh one of the panels at his memorial in back in Washington, D.C., uh says that hey, we should um educate the common people on those American founding principles.
00:02:17.039 --> 00:02:19.280
And I think we do a really poor job of that now.
00:02:19.520 --> 00:02:26.560
I think you know, there's there are three branches of science uh generally recognized the natural sciences, the formal sciences, and the social sciences.
00:02:26.800 --> 00:02:42.319
The we we know after all these many years of governing ourselves, trying every kind of government there is, and there's over 200 countries now, or about 200 countries now on the world, and you can look at all the cause and effect, how well do people do under the different types of governments?
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And I don't think we do a good job of educating why uh our our form of government is an excellent form of government.
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And so educating the common people uh in that manner, as Thomas Jefferson challenged us to, that would be my my biggest goal.
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And and how to get that done.
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Um, just trying to get the that in the curriculum of K-12 and giving a whole bunch of speeches on that topic.
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Looking back five years, name one Colorado policy you would undo and one you would defend.
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Okay.
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Um, the undo would be the annoying one of charging everybody 10 cents a bag when they get out of the grocery store.
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I know that's not a big one, but but it's a reach into our daily lives that I find annoying and not just annoying, but it is outside of the purview, outside of the role of the government.
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So that again, that founding document says that uh government derives its power at the consent of the governed.
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And I don't recall the governed saying, hey, I'll tell you what, prevent me from using a bag from the grocery store or from the supermarket, um, the the big the big box store.
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Yeah, charge me for that.
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Charge me 10 cents so that uh to punish me for using a bag.
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Anyway, I think that's an overreach.
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So um I would uh I would get rid of that one.
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Now, the one that I would defend, um property taxes went shooting up like crazy a few years ago.
00:04:15.039 --> 00:04:23.519
And that was because of what I think is is a basic mistake, a fundamental mistake, that we tie property taxes to the property values.
00:04:23.600 --> 00:04:28.720
So when property values went racing up high, then all those property taxes went racing up high.
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I introduced a bill to uh remove property values as from the formula for calculating property taxes.
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Now, the Democrats killed that bill, um, but uh I intend to reintroduce that bill at the national level uh in the United States Senate, if the people honor me with this position, because it would apply to most states across the U.S.
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A recent bipartisan poll found affordability is the top concern for Colorado voters.
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Name one specific policy on the books right now that you believe is making Colorado less affordable and what you would do to remedy it.
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You know, I have a thousand I a thousand things come to mind on this one, but um I think the biggest one is uh that policy that's on the books is uh healthcare, the you know, the government's involvement and um the partnership between, uh, and it's not a good partnership, between the providers, the hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry, and and the health insurance industry, all of those together uh create a uh a bureaucracy that has not been good for for patients, has not been good for the citizens.
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Um so this was really emphasized and really codified with the Affordable Care Act.
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Um, and as I started looking into how I would address that as a United States senator, I discovered that United States Senator Rick Scott from Florida had already introduced a bill to address this very thing.
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And he introduced it just this past uh November.
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So I visited with him recently, and um he uh and I said, Hey, help me get elected and I will be another vote in your favor on this one.
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He calls his solution the More Affordable Care Act.
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And what it does uh generally is it puts market forces um back into uh healthcare by giving more choices to the patient uh so that they decide where they get their imaging and so on.
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And I think it would really improve and we just leverage the uh all the natural forces of the of the free market in healthcare, and would that would be the first big step.
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So there's that.
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Another real quick one student debt.
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Student debt is$1.85 trillion.
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We have a student debt, and and that came about uh because in the Obama administration, uh President Obama federalized student loans.
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And so uh you can't almost can't get a private student loan uh since then.
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Um, but what happened, the result of it, it encouraged the higher ed to balloon their their costs and uh to the students because they had all this uh this very easy to access uh loan money.
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And so these students are now saddled with enormous amounts of debt.
00:07:16.480 --> 00:07:19.040
Um, it was just not a good thing for the students.
00:07:19.199 --> 00:07:25.439
So I have a plan that's not not invented by me, but introduced to me by a very smart person who presented this idea.
00:07:25.519 --> 00:07:40.560
And I said, I love this, and that is to go lean on the endowments of all these universities that benefited so greatly from that, get them to help those students pay down that debt, get them out from under that burden so that they can go buy their first home and live a good life.
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Tell us about a specific decision you made in your current job or a past one that you would make differently today.
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What did you change because of it?
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Yeah, that's that strikes a nerve for me.
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Um, you know, um the specific error that I made was talking to employees, prospective employees, before having the funding in my company to hire them.
00:08:06.720 --> 00:08:15.839
So um I had uh in my first company, I I've I'm running my second uh small tech company trying to become a big tech company.
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My my first company, which I grew up and sold, um, we were um we were working on a spin-off uh of that company.
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And uh I talked with two people that I was very enthused about coming to work for that company and launching that little spin-off.
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They were so excited that they both quit their jobs just in anticipation of being hired by my company to do to take off.
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And we weren't ready for that.
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And I realized the impact on their lives, and I felt this sudden burden of wow, I've got to somehow hustle up the funding so that they can keep their houses and so on.
00:08:53.120 --> 00:08:55.519
So uh that was a painful lesson for me.
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We pulled that off.
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We we got through that for for those two folks, but uh it should not have happened in a sloppy way that it did.
00:09:03.840 --> 00:09:17.200
So uh what I've adjusted for in uh employment going forward is I don't even bother interviewing or even saying mentioning that I have an opening until I have the funding for that job so that I can make a decision right away and put people to work.
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So yeah, painful lesson.
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What is one thing you believe Colorado needs to do that may be difficult, unpopular, or expensive, but that you believe is necessary?
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And what role would your office play in moving that forward?
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Goodness.
00:09:32.960 --> 00:09:33.600
You know what?
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I guess I'm gonna say the my mantra, which is um smaller government.
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Uh, you know, Thomas Jefferson, my hero, uh, said in his first inaugural address uh that what we need is a wise and frugal government.
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So I I love that because it acknowledges that there is a role for government, but it it should be a wise gov uh role.
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The the role primarily is to secure the people's rights, but we also appropriately give government the role of of developing infrastructure to facilitate commerce, like good roads and good airports and air traffic control, those things that don't make money, but it facilitates cargo, the moving of people and cargo and uh and liberty like that.
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And um, so so there's that good side.
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But then on the other side, um, the biggest reason that we have affordability challenges is because government keeps growing bigger and bigger and bigger.
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It creates more and more regulation, which creates costs, and it taxes more and more.
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Um, and the taxes, you know, first they the taxes go to to provide um oh worthy things, worthy services like court systems and that sort of thing.
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But then after a while, the bureaucrats start realizing and the legislators start realizing, gee, I can tax uh the people to uh move money from them to someone else in exchange for their vote.
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So that all of these things just add up to a ballooning of government.
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And uh, I mean, the state, since I've been in the Colorado State legislature for eight years now, um, the budget has gone, the annual budget has gone from uh 33 billion to 46 billion, meaning it's grown by one and a half billion every year.
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So the the the pointed uh answer to your question is reduce government, make it smaller, reduce the footprint of government in everybody's lives.
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And uh that is a very hard thing to do because legislators get addicted to all that cash and they love to uh to exchange it for votes.
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But that's that's gonna be my biggest uh effort is to try to find areas everywhere that I can reduce the involvement of government in our lives and the size of it.
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And lastly, working in politics can be stressful.
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What is your favorite way to de-stress or a favorite activity outside of work?
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You know what?
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I I just love Colorado, and there's nothing more fun to me than sitting in a mountain stream and uh even in a lawn chair.
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I actually keep a lawn chair in the back of my uh my SUV that I drive around in and water socks, uh uh, so and just to sit in a mountain stream uh with a cigar and enjoy the river and uh and all that nature.
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Um, nothing's just more refreshing than flowing uh clean Colorado mountain water.
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And so that's my favorite thing to do.
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Uh um hiking as well, you know, hiking around, and and I've got uh seven grandkids that I love to go uh spend time with, and I'll take them hiking around with me as well.
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So that's it.
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Just enjoying everything that Colorado is, on top of uh all of the the tremendous uh job opportunities in high tech.
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So it's a it's a great combination in a state, and I love this place.
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Senator Beasley, thank you so much for your time and best of luck with the elections.
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Thank you, Rachel.
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It's been my pleasure.
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Hello, my name is Mark Basley, and I am running for United States Senate from Colorado.
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Why are you seeking this office and what experience or perspective would you bring to the position?
00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:25.199
You know, I'm looking to fulfill the challenge given us by uh Benjamin Franklin as he was emerging from uh the writing of the Constitution, and uh he was asked by someone in the crowd, hey, what kind of government have you given us?
00:00:25.359 --> 00:00:29.600
And he said, uh, a republic, ma'am, if you can keep it.
00:00:29.920 --> 00:00:38.399
So uh keeping the republic is a challenge that uh has uh, well, we've we've pulled it off so far in this first 250 years.
00:00:38.560 --> 00:00:41.840
Um, I'd like to see it continue for the next 250 years as well.
00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:44.479
So keeping the republic is my goal.
00:00:44.560 --> 00:00:56.000
And that's uh that's trying to adhere to those American founding principles established in the mission statement, as I call it, the founding uh document of our country, which is uh the Declaration of Independence.
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The perspective that I bring is one of uh having an international upbringing, uh having lived outside of the United States uh much of my life, Puerto Rico and South Africa.
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And that's what made me realize the exceptional nature of uh of the United States.
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And then from a professional standpoint, um, I'm an aerospace engineer by by profession, so um I uh can bring that.
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Uh aerospace is a big deal in Colorado, hundreds of thousands of jobs, and a lot of big businesses are resident in Colorado.
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We have a lot of um of military bases, and so that's uh an important representation for Colorado to have in Washington, D.C.
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If elected, what would be your main priority while in office and what steps would you take toward accomplishing it?
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Um, you know, there's uh um a monument to my hero, my political hero in Washington, D.C.
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Monument to uh Thomas Jefferson.
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I keep a little mini statue, about a nine-inch uh bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson on my uh state senate desk in the in the Capitol in Denver.
00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:16.960
And uh one of the panels at his memorial in back in Washington, D.C., uh says that hey, we should um educate the common people on those American founding principles.
00:02:17.039 --> 00:02:19.280
And I think we do a really poor job of that now.
00:02:19.520 --> 00:02:26.560
I think you know, there's there are three branches of science uh generally recognized the natural sciences, the formal sciences, and the social sciences.
00:02:26.800 --> 00:02:42.319
The we we know after all these many years of governing ourselves, trying every kind of government there is, and there's over 200 countries now, or about 200 countries now on the world, and you can look at all the cause and effect, how well do people do under the different types of governments?
00:02:42.479 --> 00:02:50.639
And I don't think we do a good job of educating why uh our our form of government is an excellent form of government.
00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:59.120
And so educating the common people uh in that manner, as Thomas Jefferson challenged us to, that would be my my biggest goal.
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And and how to get that done.
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Um, just trying to get the that in the curriculum of K-12 and giving a whole bunch of speeches on that topic.
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Looking back five years, name one Colorado policy you would undo and one you would defend.
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Okay.
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Um, the undo would be the annoying one of charging everybody 10 cents a bag when they get out of the grocery store.
00:03:25.520 --> 00:03:37.599
I know that's not a big one, but but it's a reach into our daily lives that I find annoying and not just annoying, but it is outside of the purview, outside of the role of the government.
00:03:37.759 --> 00:03:45.039
So that again, that founding document says that uh government derives its power at the consent of the governed.
00:03:45.199 --> 00:03:57.280
And I don't recall the governed saying, hey, I'll tell you what, prevent me from using a bag from the grocery store or from the supermarket, um, the the big the big box store.
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Yeah, charge me for that.
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Charge me 10 cents so that uh to punish me for using a bag.
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Anyway, I think that's an overreach.
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So um I would uh I would get rid of that one.
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Now, the one that I would defend, um property taxes went shooting up like crazy a few years ago.
00:04:15.039 --> 00:04:23.519
And that was because of what I think is is a basic mistake, a fundamental mistake, that we tie property taxes to the property values.
00:04:23.600 --> 00:04:28.720
So when property values went racing up high, then all those property taxes went racing up high.
00:04:28.879 --> 00:04:35.839
I introduced a bill to uh remove property values as from the formula for calculating property taxes.
00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:50.000
Now, the Democrats killed that bill, um, but uh I intend to reintroduce that bill at the national level uh in the United States Senate, if the people honor me with this position, because it would apply to most states across the U.S.
00:04:50.959 --> 00:04:56.000
A recent bipartisan poll found affordability is the top concern for Colorado voters.
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Name one specific policy on the books right now that you believe is making Colorado less affordable and what you would do to remedy it.
00:05:03.199 --> 00:05:37.600
You know, I have a thousand I a thousand things come to mind on this one, but um I think the biggest one is uh that policy that's on the books is uh healthcare, the you know, the government's involvement and um the partnership between, uh, and it's not a good partnership, between the providers, the hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry, and and the health insurance industry, all of those together uh create a uh a bureaucracy that has not been good for for patients, has not been good for the citizens.
00:05:37.839 --> 00:05:44.240
Um so this was really emphasized and really codified with the Affordable Care Act.
00:05:44.399 --> 00:05:56.319
Um, and as I started looking into how I would address that as a United States senator, I discovered that United States Senator Rick Scott from Florida had already introduced a bill to address this very thing.
00:05:56.480 --> 00:05:58.959
And he introduced it just this past uh November.
00:05:59.120 --> 00:06:06.560
So I visited with him recently, and um he uh and I said, Hey, help me get elected and I will be another vote in your favor on this one.
00:06:06.720 --> 00:06:09.519
He calls his solution the More Affordable Care Act.
00:06:09.680 --> 00:06:25.040
And what it does uh generally is it puts market forces um back into uh healthcare by giving more choices to the patient uh so that they decide where they get their imaging and so on.
00:06:25.120 --> 00:06:35.600
And I think it would really improve and we just leverage the uh all the natural forces of the of the free market in healthcare, and would that would be the first big step.
00:06:35.759 --> 00:06:36.800
So there's that.
00:06:36.959 --> 00:06:39.680
Another real quick one student debt.
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Student debt is$1.85 trillion.
00:06:43.519 --> 00:06:52.160
We have a student debt, and and that came about uh because in the Obama administration, uh President Obama federalized student loans.
00:06:52.319 --> 00:06:57.120
And so uh you can't almost can't get a private student loan uh since then.
00:06:57.279 --> 00:07:12.399
Um, but what happened, the result of it, it encouraged the higher ed to balloon their their costs and uh to the students because they had all this uh this very easy to access uh loan money.
00:07:12.560 --> 00:07:16.399
And so these students are now saddled with enormous amounts of debt.
00:07:16.480 --> 00:07:19.040
Um, it was just not a good thing for the students.
00:07:19.199 --> 00:07:25.439
So I have a plan that's not not invented by me, but introduced to me by a very smart person who presented this idea.
00:07:25.519 --> 00:07:40.560
And I said, I love this, and that is to go lean on the endowments of all these universities that benefited so greatly from that, get them to help those students pay down that debt, get them out from under that burden so that they can go buy their first home and live a good life.
00:07:41.360 --> 00:07:47.279
Tell us about a specific decision you made in your current job or a past one that you would make differently today.
00:07:47.439 --> 00:07:49.439
What did you change because of it?
00:07:50.879 --> 00:07:53.759
Yeah, that's that strikes a nerve for me.
00:07:53.920 --> 00:08:06.399
Um, you know, um the specific error that I made was talking to employees, prospective employees, before having the funding in my company to hire them.
00:08:06.720 --> 00:08:15.839
So um I had uh in my first company, I I've I'm running my second uh small tech company trying to become a big tech company.
00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:23.680
My my first company, which I grew up and sold, um, we were um we were working on a spin-off uh of that company.
00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:30.560
And uh I talked with two people that I was very enthused about coming to work for that company and launching that little spin-off.
00:08:30.879 --> 00:08:39.840
They were so excited that they both quit their jobs just in anticipation of being hired by my company to do to take off.
00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:42.080
And we weren't ready for that.
00:08:42.399 --> 00:08:52.960
And I realized the impact on their lives, and I felt this sudden burden of wow, I've got to somehow hustle up the funding so that they can keep their houses and so on.
00:08:53.120 --> 00:08:55.519
So uh that was a painful lesson for me.
00:08:55.759 --> 00:08:56.799
We pulled that off.
00:08:56.879 --> 00:09:03.759
We we got through that for for those two folks, but uh it should not have happened in a sloppy way that it did.
00:09:03.840 --> 00:09:17.200
So uh what I've adjusted for in uh employment going forward is I don't even bother interviewing or even saying mentioning that I have an opening until I have the funding for that job so that I can make a decision right away and put people to work.
00:09:17.360 --> 00:09:19.360
So yeah, painful lesson.
00:09:19.840 --> 00:09:27.919
What is one thing you believe Colorado needs to do that may be difficult, unpopular, or expensive, but that you believe is necessary?
00:09:28.080 --> 00:09:30.559
And what role would your office play in moving that forward?
00:09:31.039 --> 00:09:31.840
Goodness.
00:09:32.960 --> 00:09:33.600
You know what?
00:09:33.679 --> 00:09:41.600
I guess I'm gonna say the my mantra, which is um smaller government.
00:09:41.759 --> 00:09:50.799
Uh, you know, Thomas Jefferson, my hero, uh, said in his first inaugural address uh that what we need is a wise and frugal government.
00:09:51.039 --> 00:09:58.879
So I I love that because it acknowledges that there is a role for government, but it it should be a wise gov uh role.
00:09:59.039 --> 00:10:19.360
The the role primarily is to secure the people's rights, but we also appropriately give government the role of of developing infrastructure to facilitate commerce, like good roads and good airports and air traffic control, those things that don't make money, but it facilitates cargo, the moving of people and cargo and uh and liberty like that.
00:10:19.600 --> 00:10:23.039
And um, so so there's that good side.
00:10:23.200 --> 00:10:31.200
But then on the other side, um, the biggest reason that we have affordability challenges is because government keeps growing bigger and bigger and bigger.
00:10:31.360 --> 00:10:36.639
It creates more and more regulation, which creates costs, and it taxes more and more.
00:10:36.799 --> 00:10:46.720
Um, and the taxes, you know, first they the taxes go to to provide um oh worthy things, worthy services like court systems and that sort of thing.
00:10:46.799 --> 00:10:58.240
But then after a while, the bureaucrats start realizing and the legislators start realizing, gee, I can tax uh the people to uh move money from them to someone else in exchange for their vote.
00:10:58.480 --> 00:11:03.600
So that all of these things just add up to a ballooning of government.
00:11:03.840 --> 00:11:17.519
And uh, I mean, the state, since I've been in the Colorado State legislature for eight years now, um, the budget has gone, the annual budget has gone from uh 33 billion to 46 billion, meaning it's grown by one and a half billion every year.
00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:29.039
So the the the pointed uh answer to your question is reduce government, make it smaller, reduce the footprint of government in everybody's lives.
00:11:29.200 --> 00:11:37.440
And uh that is a very hard thing to do because legislators get addicted to all that cash and they love to uh to exchange it for votes.
00:11:37.679 --> 00:11:48.240
But that's that's gonna be my biggest uh effort is to try to find areas everywhere that I can reduce the involvement of government in our lives and the size of it.
00:11:49.200 --> 00:11:52.399
And lastly, working in politics can be stressful.
00:11:52.480 --> 00:11:56.480
What is your favorite way to de-stress or a favorite activity outside of work?
00:11:57.039 --> 00:11:57.519
You know what?
00:11:58.080 --> 00:12:08.480
I I just love Colorado, and there's nothing more fun to me than sitting in a mountain stream and uh even in a lawn chair.
00:12:08.559 --> 00:12:25.200
I actually keep a lawn chair in the back of my uh my SUV that I drive around in and water socks, uh uh, so and just to sit in a mountain stream uh with a cigar and enjoy the river and uh and all that nature.
00:12:25.360 --> 00:12:32.639
Um, nothing's just more refreshing than flowing uh clean Colorado mountain water.
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And so that's my favorite thing to do.
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Uh um hiking as well, you know, hiking around, and and I've got uh seven grandkids that I love to go uh spend time with, and I'll take them hiking around with me as well.
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So that's it.
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Just enjoying everything that Colorado is, on top of uh all of the the tremendous uh job opportunities in high tech.
00:12:53.039 --> 00:12:57.120
So it's a it's a great combination in a state, and I love this place.
00:12:57.519 --> 00:13:01.519
Senator Beasley, thank you so much for your time and best of luck with the elections.
00:13:01.840 --> 00:13:02.559
Thank you, Rachel.
00:13:02.639 --> 00:13:03.679
It's been my pleasure.
