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August 02, 2011 06:13 PM UTC

Colorado Delegation Explains Debt-Ceiling Votes

  • 13 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

The Colorado Independent’s David O. Williams reports:

Democrat Diana DeGette joined Republicans Doug Lamborn and Scott Tipton in voting no on the measure, while Democrats Jared Polis and Ed Perlmutter voted for the deal along with Republicans Mike Coffman and Cory Gardner.

“Here we are at the 11th hour, with a gun to our head, being asked to accept an extreme, unbalanced proposal that places too great a burden on the middle class while failing to ask for any shared sacrifice from corporations and the nation’s wealthiest,” DeGette said in a prepared statement. “Frankly, after months of what of could have been productive negotiations to develop a balanced economic path for our country, I resent being forced into this choice.”

Perlmutter, however, said it was matter of not letting America default on its financial obligations by the Tuesday deadline.

“Our nation pays its bills,” Perlmutter said in a release. “This bill preserves the full faith and credit of the United States without sacrificing what makes our country special. American families can’t endure any more chaos on this issue, and we must move on. I’m not happy with every part of this bill, but it would be entirely irresponsible to destroy our economy because each of us can’t get 100 percent of our demands.”

Coffman, a veteran, made a military analogy.

“As a Marine Corps combat veteran, I see this agreement today as little more than establishing a beachhead in what will be a long and difficult campaign to defeat deficit spending, pass a balanced budget amendment, and to pay down the national debt,” Coffman said…

Tipton, a Tea Party freshman, said the bill simply didn’t cut deeply enough.

9NEWS has this statement from freshman Rep. Cory Gardner:

“The plan before us cuts spending and takes America one step closer to a government that lives within its means. It caps spending, and for the first time in 15 years will hold Washington accountable for sending a Balanced Budget Amendment to the states. The spending cuts in this plan are real, but they are only the beginning. The House has been able to successfully push for cuts that would have been impossible just six months ago. I ran for Congress to cut spending so that we can end the wasteful disregard of the taxpayer dollars, get government out of the way and let America work. To do this, I will continue to put people before politics.”

And Rep. Doug Lamborn, who managed not to offend in his statement, ultimately could not vote for any legislation that might result in cuts to defense programs.

“The possibility that serious defense cuts could happen under certain conditions concerns me greatly. I don’t want to in any way to allow even the possibility of huge reductions in our military capacity.”

We’ve not yet seen any comment from Rep. Jared Polis, last seen beaming on the House floor live via C-SPAN as Arizona Rep. Gabielle Giffords arrived to vote for the first time since being seriously wounded in a shooting last January. Both Colorado Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet are solid “yes” votes on the final debt-ceiling compromise vote later today, though we expect both of them to complain vigorously about the parts they don’t like.

Coming up: Colorado’s debt-ceiling winners and losers.

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13 thoughts on “Colorado Delegation Explains Debt-Ceiling Votes”

  1. Thanks, Pols. You just saved me an hour digging. DeGette’s vote seemed surprising given that if we didn’t have an agreement, we would be throwing the US over a financial cliff.

    I understand her metaphor of having a gun to her head in the eleventh hour, however. Democrats should not have had to participate in this tea party charade. Raising the debt ceiling is normally a rubber-stamp event, and the Tea Party led GOP hijacked the legislative process to bankrupt our social safety net programs. Any compromise from the Democrats was a compromise that should not have been made. Diana DeGette had an opportunity to voice her outrage by voting “no” when it was going to pass anyway, and I am glad she did.

    (This tactic from the Tea Partiers smelled like Karl Rove. I’m wondering if he was either involved, or has a new generation of Rove “babies” scheming to undermine the President. As evil as it was, one has to give them credit for being crafty.)

      1. It’s true, beej, Democrats have learned a lot from that evil genius Ronald Reagan, who extorted far more money from taxpayers than any Democrat since, and hiked the national debt way more than any Democrat would ever dream of. It’s sad that you’re turning on your patron saint so blatantly, though.

        1. Where do they hide the brainwashing camps? You think Reagan wanted to raise taxes? No, he was forced to raise taxes by Democrats. Just like Mr. Keynes himself has been forced to cut spending by the Tea Party.

          1. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Reagan was pressured by the Senate’s Republican leadership to raise taxes the first time (he raised them 10 more times after that), and it came as no surprise to people who knew him, as he’d approved the largest tax increase in California history when he was governor.

            He displayed a type of political flexibility and pragmatism that allowed him to build a domestic record in a Washington where power was divided between the two parties and where not all Republicans agreed that unlimited tax cuts were a good thing for the nation.

            Of course, Reagan the president didn’t have to live up to the Myth of Reagan when he was actually in office the way his misguided followers do now. Sad, really, how you prefer the legend to the facts.

            1. Reagan cut taxes five hundred times, vetoed every tax increase Democrats ever sent him, and after he was overridden by a Congress infiltrated by Soviet agents, he personally sacrificed himself leading the war of 1986 that permanently lowered taxes to zero for everyone and ushered in 1000 years of peace (which was tragically cut short by the election of Bill Clinton).

              Seriously, I don’t know where you get your crazy lies. The public schools? Books? Newspapers? Personal experience? The KGB? Satan? Next time, try watching one of the videos my mom got me from the Heritage Foundation.

  3. all the negatives?  

    Of course, it might be fun to see the irony when they clamor for deficit spending the same way anti-choice people wail when they go in for an abortion . . . then again, maybe not.  

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