March 25, 2010 09:05 PM UTC

Obstruction: It's What's For Dinner

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• by: Colorado Pols

The day before yesterday, we discussed a new obstruction tactic being employed by U.S. Senate Republicans, following passage of the Democrats’ health care reform bill over the weekend. This new procedural move by Republicans, essentially the denial of consent needed to hold afternoon hearings, happened to coincide with a trip by Colorado Sen. Dan Gibbs of Summit County to testify in support of increased funding to fight the bark beetle epidemic plaguing Colorado forests.

When we left off on Tuesday, Sen. Mark Udall was hoping to arrange a rescheduled hearing where Sen. Gibbs could testify–didn’t happen, as the Summit Daily News reports today:

Colorado’s bark beetle hearing was canceled Tuesday due to Republican obstructionism, according to U.S. Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.). In a press release, Udall’s office said Republican leaders used an arcane rule to cancel committee hearings while vowing not to cooperate with Democrats for the rest of the year.

For several months, U.S. Senator Mark Udall worked with Senate leaders to schedule Colorado’s first bark beetle hearing. Udall’s bill, the National Forest Insect and Disease Emergency Act, was originally scheduled to be heard in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday, with Gibbs testifying about the danger posed to Colorado communities by bark beetle-damaged trees. If passed, the bill would give the Forest Service and Interior Department more resources to reduce bark beetle-related safety and health threats.

Wednesday, according to Udall, Republican leaders again used the delay tactic. Udall said he is now urging Republican leaders to stop their political maneuvering and allow Colorado’s interests to be heard by moving forward with the much-needed bill…

State Senator Dan Gibbs flew back to Colorado today without having the opportunity to testify.

“If Republican leadership had any idea of what we are facing in Colorado with this epidemic, they would stop these games now and let us do our jobs and help Colorado with this serious issue,” Gibbs said.

And it’s not just this hearing, which happens to be of magnified importance to Colorado. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina canceled an afternoon hearing of the Armed Services Committee yesterday, despite the fact that military officers had traveled to Washington from Hawaii and even Korea to testify. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) complains that her hearing on police training in Afghanistan yesterday was canceled as well, and there doesn’t appear to be any end in sight.

We think they’re playing with fire (excuse the forestry pun, though perhaps not in our case), as we said before–Republicans seem to have fully given over to the rage of what is in truth only a small fraction of their base, let alone the broader electorate. While a few hardcore “Tea Party” activists–whose votes were never really in question–will cheer this obstruction on, Democrats could use the noncontroversial subject matter of these obstructed hearings to great effect with the rest of the voters this fall.