December 17, 2015 10:58 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Thursday (Dec. 17)

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• by: Colorado Pols

There are seven shopping days left before Christmas…remember that when you are standing in line tonight for the first showing of the new Star Wars movie. It’s time to Get More Smarter with Colorado Pols! If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example).

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► Congress is scheduled to begin its Holiday recess at the end of the week, but not before signing a check for $680 billion. As Politico reports:

Speaker Paul Ryan can count on strong support from Republicans to pass the measure, which he negotiated as one of his first acts since taking over the House.

It helps, perhaps, that national security issues have recently taken over the campaign spotlight, diverting some attention away from fiscal issues. But Democrats are seizing on what they see as a disconnect between the GOP’s national platform and their end-of-year tax bill. And they’re calling the GOP hypocritical for failing to require the new spending to be offset with cuts elsewhere — particularly after spending years battling with President Barack Obama over deficits and spending cuts…

…The GOP also sees the package as a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine — a more than $1.1 trillion spending bill they have to clear before leaving town — go down. Lawmakers have to fund the government, a tough vote for conservatives who want to cut spending. To swallow it, GOP leadership threw in a tax package.

Despite its sizable price tag, many conservatives see the tax deal as a net positive.

We’re not going to toss too many stones here; we’re still in shock that a Republican Congress might actually approve a budget instead of threatening to shut down the federal government.

► The race for CD-6 is shaping up to be the most high-profile Congressional battle in recent Colorado history, with advertisements and endorsements taking place well before 2016 even begins. As the Aurora Sentinel reports, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is airing radio ads targeting state Sen. Morgan Carroll, the likely Democratic challenger to incumbent Rep. Mike Coffman:

A few days after U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, was criticized in ads over votes regarding the terror watchlist “gun loophole,” Coffman’s likely 2016 opponent — state Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora — faces similar ad attacks over President Obama’s proposal to close U.S. facilities at Guantanamo Bay and transfer detainees to mainland America.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which supports Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, said this week that they are running an ad critical of Carroll following her comments to The Denver Post last week, in which she reiterated her support for the closing of the Guantanamo Bay facility and said that Colorado could be the proper place to house those detainees — “only if we are the safest place,” she told the Post…

…In a statement, Carroll said the ad “is the kind of dirty and dishonest politics that people are sick of coming from Washington, D.C.

“It is absurd to say that I, or anyone else, wants to bring terrorists to Colorado. The fact that Washington Republicans and Mike Coffman would make gross, unsubstantiated claims while politicizing those who have died is disgusting,” Carroll said. “Coffman should apologize because Coloradans deserve better.”

Coffman skips a vote that would have prevented people on the “no-fly list” from purchasing guns. Carroll believes Guantanamo Bay should be closed, and is not opposed to some detainees being housed in the Florence SuperMax prison depending on the circumstances. If we had to own one of these two issues, we’d rather be in Carroll’s shoes.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► Congressman Mike Coffman sits on the House Veterans Affairs Committee and is Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. Coffman hasn’t really done much of anything to help solve the problems with the construction of a new VA Hospital in Aurora, but he is completely onboard with publicly shaming a retired VA official. From the Denver Post:

A former VA executive was singled out for humiliation this week in a way that few — if any — government workers ever have received: a public shaming penned by Congress…

…Included in a year-end spending package — which totals  more than 2,000 pages — is a 71-word provision that takes direct aim at Haggstrom…

…U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, another longtime VA critic, agreed the measure was “largely symbolic” but said it was “important nonetheless,” given how [Glenn] Haggstrom talked about the Aurora project’s progress to Congress.

“His conduct was not simply incompetent, it was criminal,” said Coffman, R-Aurora. “He lied in hearing after hearing after hearing about the status of the hospital.”

Glenn Haggstrom, the former construction chief for the Department of Veterans Affairs, retired from the agency in March. Coffman has done very, very little to actually address any of the problems with the VA, but he’s always got time to kick sand in someone else’s face. If leadership were about blaming other people for everything, Coffman would be a 4-star General.

► Congress is putting the finishing touches on an omnibus spending bill that will also extend  tax credits for the solar and wind power industries. No, we’re serious — they really are going to do this, as Cathy Proctor writes for the Denver Business Journal.

► To our neighbors in Nebraska and Oklahoma: Get Bent! The U.S. Solicitor General has sided with Colorado in urging the Supreme Court to refuse to hear arguments for a dunderheaded lawsuit attempt. From The Cannabist:

The U.S. government has taken Colorado’s side in a dispute with neighboring states over marijuana legalization and is urging the Supreme Court to not hear a major challenge to the state’s recreational cannabis laws.

The new brief filed Wednesday by U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. could have a significant impact on the Supreme Court’s willingness to hear the case against Colorado, drug law experts say.

The Solicitor General’s brief comes seven months after the Supreme Court first asked the top government lawyer for an opinion on the lawsuit filed against Colorado’s legal cannabis laws by neighboring states Nebraska and Oklahoma. The new brief addresses Nebraska and Oklahoma’s complaint — and questions its place within the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction.

“The motion for leave to file a bill of complaint should be denied because this is not an appropriate case for the exercise of this Court’s original jurisdiction,” the brief says. “Entertaining the type of dispute at issue here — essentially that one State’s laws make it more likely that third parties will violate federal and state law in another State — would represent a substantial and unwarranted expansion of this Court’s original jurisdiction.”

You hear that, Nebraska and Oklahoma? Now leave us alone, and focus your time on buying Christmas gifts for your livestock spouses.

► There are no shortage of ideas for a potential disaster designation for Superfund cleanup at the Gold King Mine in Silverton. Some ideas make more sense than others, as Bruce Finley reports for the Denver Post.

► Colorado Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Cortez), who is probably definitely not running for U.S. Senate this week, took part in a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Wednesday that featured testimony from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The hearing was intended to address data collection by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but — surprise!!! — it turned into another display of partisan bickering.

►  It doesn’t make a lot of sense to question the motives of Robert Dear, the alleged shooter behind the Planned Parenthood terrorist attack in Colorado Springs, when Dear himself is shouting about his guilt in court. Dear yelled out in a  courtroom last week and declared “I’m a warrior for the babies.”

► The oil and gas industry is sitting on leases that cover more than 3 million acres of public lands in the United States. If you are a taxpayer, it’s costing you money.

► Some of the more vocal supporters of Republican Presidential frontrunner Donald Trump are a little scary.

► There may be as many as 10 Republican candidates seeking a vacancy committee appointment to fill the remainder of Rep. Jack Tate’s term in the State House. Tate will resign his seat in HD-37 after being appointed on Saturday to replace state Sen. David Balmer, who is himself leaving the legislature to take a new job.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► Have you missed out on any of the Republican Presidential debates? Colorado Pols hasn’t, so we took stock of the current state of the GOP field entering 2016.

► Russian President Vladimir Putin is having fun with the Republican Party. At a news conference on Thursday, Putin had nothing but positive things to say about GOP Presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. Somewhere in Moscow, Kremlin advisors are laughing their asses off.

ICYMI

► Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Adelson was the top individual Republican donor in the 2012 election cycle and tried to shield his purchase of the largest newspaper in Nevada. What are the odds of Hillary Clinton winning the endorsement of the Review-Journal next fall?

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