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Congressman Greg Lopez wants to join the ‘problem solvers, not the watchers’ | HIKING MIX | Columnists
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Congressman Greg Lopez wants to join the ‘problem solvers, not the watchers’ | HIKING MIX | Columnists

Election Day will mark almost precisely two-thirds of Colorado Republican Greg Lopez’s six-month term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Elected in June to fill the remainder of former U.S. Rep. Ken Buck’s term, representing the 4th Congressional District, following five Republican terms. resigned from his seatLopez, a Republican who lives in Elizabeth, was was sworn in on July 8 and stays standing until his successor – either American Republican Lauren Boebert or Democrat Trisha Calvarese – takes office on January 3.

Lopez and his wife, Lisa, moved to Colorado in 1987 after the son and grandson of farmworkers grew up near Dallas, served in the Air Force and earned a business administration degree from New Mexico State University at Alamogordo. He owns a restaurant and a medical supply company, but has spent much of his career helping create opportunities for business owners, including serving as president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Denver and for six years as state director of the U.S. Small Business Administration.

While Lopez, 60, has run for office several times over the decades — including for U.S. Senate in 1998 and 2016, followed by failure in the 2018 and 2022 Republican gubernatorial primaries — his victory lopsided In this summer’s elections It was the first time Lopez had won an election in three decades, since Parker voters made him the state’s youngest mayor at age 27 in 1992.

Elected as a Democrat to the nonpartisan post, Lopez switched parties two years later, after deciding to consider the party he had always belonged to because his parents were Democrats. Finally, he said he drew up a table with the priorities of the Democratic Party on one side and those of the Republican Party on the other and realized that he belonged to the latter.

“I will always try to do my best to improve the quality of life of individuals in communities,” Lopez said in a recent interview. “As mayor, that was my role, so I haven’t changed, but that’s the continuing thing that motivates me to be in these positions, is to try to help people the best I can. can and improve their quality of life.”

As the notoriously unproductive 118th Congress nears the finish line — with a sharply divided Republican Party holding a slim majority in the House and Democrats wielding an even narrower majority in the Senate — lawmakers have passed fewer bills. law than any Congress in decades — Lopez said he learned a lot. about the difficulty of enacting legislation, but stressed that personal interactions are paramount.

“The No. 1 key to getting things done is building relationships,” Lopez said. “It doesn’t mean you’re going to agree, but we need to respect each other. We need to be able to sit down at a table and just ask questions: Why do you see things this way? What are things? Does that worry you? Let’s be problem solvers, not problem watchers, and I think when people sit down together and have a good, productive discussion, we move further along the path to agreement. than just moving away from sound bites to social media posts and that sort of thing.

He said listening to both sides gave him “a better understanding of how difficult it is to get everyone or the majority to agree to move forward with the project, just to get it to the Senate.”

Bills passed by the House, Lopez added, most often fail in the Democratic-controlled Senate. “And so while we’re doing our job, the Senate is preventing us from allowing all of these good laws to be passed and presented to the president,” he said.

Lopez threw himself into experience, serving as an interim speaker on several occasions and as a defensive cornerback in the Congressional flag football game, when he called upon his high school experience for a game against the Capitol Police team “under the bright lights”. at Audi Field, a football stadium.

“We didn’t win, but we at least scored a touchdown, and I had an interception and I had bragging rights because I was voted the team’s most valuable player. Congress,” Lopez said with a broad smile.

“The best analogy I can give you is: I tell people I’m this foreign exchange student coming in at the end of the year, and everyone says, ‘Hey, there’s a new guy in town ‘” Lopez said. “I don’t have a history of voting, so everyone on both sides of the aisle is very receptive.”

That included working with members of both parties’ congressional delegations, including signing on as co-sponsor of a bill led by Deputy House Minority Leader Joe Neguse, a Democrat from Lafayette, to increase the salaries of forest firefighters. It’s part of the mission Lopez describes as “putting people before politics.”

But Lopez stuck to his conservative principles in the most consequential vote since taking office, opposing a continuation of the resolution at the end of September to fund the federal government until December 20.

Passed by both chambers with opposition coming only from Republicans, the CR, as it’s called, kicks off what could be a major spending fight just before Christmas — and Lopez has said he’s ready to close the government to force Congress to confront its spending problem.

Shaking his head about what he calls “zombie programs,” Lopez said: “It’s a difficult thing for me to be able to vote to continue funding more than 1,200 expired and unauthorized programs that Congress has not has not yet reauthorized, at the rate of more than 800 billion dollars. » He added that he had a discussion with House Speaker Mike Johnson on the subject, but that the language he submitted was not included in the bill. “So I told him, ‘You know what, I can’t support something if we keep throwing it down the road.’ So I voted no.”

Lopez said his constituents have given him their support.

“’We’re more than happy that you shut down the government,’” he told voters. “We don’t think the government really cares about us anyway. »

At some point, Lopez said, Congress “has to start doing its job and pass a budget,” which hasn’t been done in more than 20 years, instead of passing one continuing resolution after another . “I agree,” he said. “Why can’t we pass a budget? And I hope we do, and I’m not afraid of a shutdown.”

A government shutdown, he added, “is a bit like the bogeyman. Nobody wants to talk about the bogeyman, but you know what? Sometimes we have to make problems worse in order to solve them, you know? But I don’t know if we will have the courage to do it.”


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