Colorado Congressional District 3 race: Abel Tapia, Scott Tipton on the issues

I believe the ACA should stay in place but be amended to solve problems such as the fact that rural communities in Colorado are forced to pay more than their urban counterparts.

Medicare and Social Security are programs that individuals have paid into all their lives. In order to make fair adjustments we must start by making any changes with younger individuals entering their careers so that they can plan their career with the same reliability that our seniors have.

The federal government should be allowed to make rules that will protect our environment and balance the economic interest of energy extraction with our social benefits and the economic costs of energy extraction, such as the potential disruption of our tourist economies.

I am open to discussion on reasonable measures that acknowledge the balance between certain species and our communities. Endangered species protections should protect the species in a concentrated habitat area as much as possible.

First off, everyone in the federal government needs to acknowledge and admit that climate change is real and caused at least in great part by human activity. We should use industry-proposed solutions such as cap and trade of carbon emissions to tackle this problem.

There are many things the federal government can do to boost the Colorado economy, but they start with building and maintaining infrastructure that allows our small businesses to compete and our communities to maintain jobs, such as roads, bridges, broadband coverage, cell coverage, fire mitigation, and water infrastructure. Next, the Federal government should concentrate on comprehensive immigration reform that would allow our agricultural businesses to be confident that they have the labor needed to get crops to market, and would respect the workers and families who come to work, including allowing a path to citizenship for those who contribute to our economy and society.

Raise the minimum wage, remove incentives for companies to take their earnings abroad, and incentivize reinvestment domestically.

The first step should be to raise the minimum wage which will help struggling parents and families, then we should concentrate on boosting Colorado's economy.

Yes.

Defense spending and international aid could be cut in order to provide greater reinvestment in our own country's infrastructure and communities.

We should make it more difficult for companies to keep their earnings offshore while earning profits off the back of the American public.

I do not support unfunded federal mandates to education, but I do support measures that improve education if they bring funding with them.

Yes. Adults who come here illegally still pay local, state and federal taxes as they add productivity to our economy. This country is built on immigrant effort, and insofar as someone is contributing to our economy and society we ought to allow them a path to citizenship

I think that exceptions should be made to allow for banking and to eliminate the threat of prosecution by federal law for marijuana related offenses that are otherwise legal in Colorado, but as we build a competitive advantage as pioneers in this nacent industry I am not certain that all-out legalization is in our best interest in Colorado.

I am for it.

No.

I am Catholic but I cannot imagine being in the shoes of a woman who must make this choice. This should be a choice between a woman, her doctor, and her god, without the government's interference.

It is exceedingly difficult to know who our allies are in the Middle East, groups that we have armed in the past have turned into our enemies and have forced us to put our troops in harm's way to stop the threat that we helped create. I am not certain that arming Syrian rebels is the wisest thing to do.

I would focus on maintaining funding to the VA healthcare system and insisting on common sense improvements in efficiency there. I would also fight to protect educational and job training programs for them.