Michael Bennet in Democratic candidates debate in Detroit Michigan, July 30-31, 2019

On Families & Children: Kids belong in classrooms not cages

On Health Care: Don't make employer-based health insurance illegal

BENNET: I agree that it makes it much more likely. I believe we should finish the job we started with the Affordable Care Act with a public option that gives everybody the chance to pick whether they want private insurance or public insurance. [My plan] requires the drug companies to be negotiated with by Medicare and it provides competition. That is totally different from the plan that Senator Warren and Senator Sanders and Senator Harris have proposed, which would make illegal employer based health insurance in this country and massively raise taxes on the middle class to the tune of $30 trillion. We don't need to do that. It doesn't make sense for us to take away insurance from half the people and put huge taxes on almost everybody. When we pass a public option, [we] trust the American people to make the right decision, and have universal healthcare in this country in two years.

On Health Care: Against higher taxes & banning employer-based insurance

Bennet: We need to be honest about what's in this plan. It bans employer based insurance and taxes the middle class to the tune of $30 trillion. Do you know how much that is? That is 70 percent of what the government will collect in taxes over the next 10 years.

NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio: What he's saying is absolutely inaccurate about taxes. Americans right now are paying so much money for their health care, ask people about the reality of premiums, deductibles, co-pays, out-of-pocket expenses.

Bennet: Bernie Sanders says it will cost $32 trillion and that we're going to have to raise those taxes to pay for it. You can't hide from the truth.

On Homeland Security: $5T spent in Mideast could've fixed all our infrastructure

On Immigration: Don't decriminalize border; it's Trump's nativist hostility

BENNET: I disagree that we should decriminalize our border. I was part of the Gang of Eight, with John McCain, that wrote the 2013 immigration bill that passed the Senate with 68 votes, that gave a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented people that are here, that would pass the most progressive DREAM Act that had ever been conceived, much less passed on the floor of the Senate, and had $46 billion of border security. Every single Democrat voted for that bill.

HARRIS: Laws on the books allow [kids of border crossers] to be incarcerated as though they've committed crimes. These children have not committed crimes and should be not treated like criminals.

BENNET: There's not a single person on this stage who would ever separate a child from their parents at the border. That is what this administration has done in the American people's name. They have turned our border into a symbol of nativist hostility.

On Principles & Values: Moral obligation to beat Trump, but don't impeach

BENNET: We are four months away from the Iowa Caucuses. And I just want to make sure whatever we do doesn't end up with an acquittal by Mitch McConnell in the Senate, which it surely would. And then President Trump would be running saying that he had been acquitted by the United States Congress. I believe we have a moral obligation to beat Donald Trump. He has to be a single-term president. And we can't do anything that plays into his hands. We need to be smart about how we're running or we're going to give him a second term. We can't do it.

Secretary Julian CASTRO: Senator, I think that folks are making a mistake by not pursuing impeachment. The Mueller Report clearly details that he deserves it. And what's going to happen in the fall of 2020, if they don't impeach him, is that he's going to say, "You see? The Democrats didn't go after me on impeachment, and you know why? Because I didn't do anything wrong."