GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.

“This whole tragedy is really Mitt Romney ruining Christmas for 160 million Americans,” U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, said early Thursday on a conference call with reporters. “This is typical of the tax-and-spend Republican Party. They’re interested in raising taxes on the middle class. They show no interest in lifting a finger to maintain this thousand-dollar tax benefit for middle class families.”

Romney has largely avoided the stalemate, which heated up Tuesday when House Republicans rejected a Senate compromise that was passed by a vote of 89-10 on Saturday – with 39 Senate Republicans voting in favor of the two-month extension. House Speaker John Boehner said the GOP insists on a one-year deal and that Congress should stay in session.

Romney has tried to stay out of what he called the “congressional sausage-making process,” instead trying to deflect blame toward President Barack Obama. But the Obama administration has jumped on Romney’s dodging of the issue, and even GOP rivals have joined in. Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich called staying out of the fray a “timidity of calculation.”

Colorado U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, a Democrat, agreed.

“There’s a lack of leadership here in the House on the part of the majority, and I have to tell you there seems to be a lack of leadership at the national level among the Republican candidates running for president,” Udall told reporters Thursday.

“Mitt Romney has dismissed the payroll tax cut as “a little Band-Aid,” but it’s beyond interesting to me that his home-state [Massachusetts] Republican senator, my colleague, my friend Scott Brown, has come out strongly in support of the Senate position and the Senate bill,” he added.

Brown issued this statement right after the House vote on Tuesday:

“It angers me that House Republicans would rather continue playing politics than find solutions. Their actions will hurt American families and be detrimental to our fragile economy. We are Americans first; now is not the time for drawing lines in the sand.”

Colorado U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, again blasted the intransigence of her Republican House colleagues on Thursday.

“One thing we’ve been hearing the American public say ever since the [budget] debacle of last summer is we need to have our elected officials compromising,” DeGette said. “What the tea party Republicans kind of forced the Republican caucus to do was reject the entire compromise.”

Democrats and many Senate Republicans say the two-month extension is necessary to work out a full one-year extension, and that all the many details cannot be ironed out in the nine days remaining before the end of the year.

After calling for the Senate to work through the break and come up with a better bill, Colorado’s four Republican House members were quiet on the issue on Thursday.

“Having opposed the original Iraq war authorization in 2002, I am pleased with today’s announcement that U.S. troops will withdraw fully from Iraq by the end of the year,” Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette said in a prepared statement.

Sen. Mark Udall

Total withdrawal came as a result of a breakdown in negotiations with the Iraqi government that would have left a training force in place in exchange for immunity from prosecution for U.S. troops.

“I remain concerned about the security situation in Iraq and believe that keeping a limited number of U.S. troops in place to continue training and assistance would have helped sustain U.S. and Iraqi progress in stemming violence,” Democratic Sen. Mark Udall said in a release. “As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I will continue to monitor the situation closely.”

Udall, then a member of the House, also voted against funding the initial war effort, although he later voted to appropriate funds as the campaign continued for nearly a decade, costing 4,400 American lives and more than $1 trillion.

“I voted against the Iraq war, and I still believe that it ultimately harmed what should have been our military’s top priority – our mission in Afghanistan,” Udall said. “However, once our forces were committed in Iraq, abandoning that country would have risked the security of the entire region.”

Leaving troops in Iraq without immunity does not make sense, Udall added.

“It is ultimately unacceptable to expect our troops to provide that assistance without immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts, which has become a sticking point between U.S. and Iraqi negotiators,” he said. “Our troops have fought and died to establish a functioning democratic government in Iraq, and now we must respect the wishes of Iraq’s leaders.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, an Iraq War veteran and a member of United States House Armed Services Committee, expressed disappointment a deal couldn’t be reached with the Iraqi government.

“No doubt, the value of keeping military advisers in Iraq would maintain our military-to-military relationships to help provide stability and to buffer Iran’s continued efforts to have influence in the country,” Coffman said. “Although I’m disappointed that we are not having a contingent of U.S. military trainers in Iraq next year, the Iraqi demand that our troops be subject to the Iraqi justice system is inappropriate and unacceptable.”

Democratic Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet said, “Our troops have performed bravely and effectively in Iraq and accomplished everything that was asked of them, securing communities and creating the space for democratic change to begin to take root.”

He added the withdrawal is yet another success for U.S. foreign policy under the current administration.

“This announcement represents another significant milestone for the country and U.S. forces, including the killing of Osama bin Laden,” Bennet said. “However, serious threats against the United States remain, and we must continue to work to ensure we have the best-trained and best-equipped military in the world.”

President Barack Obama is giving a speech on his jobs program right now at Abraham Lincoln High School in Denver. It’s a hot day and helicopters are circling and people in the crowd are reportedly passing out from exhaustion. It’s going to be a big news story. Yet the press badges issued for his fundraising trip around the American West would seem to place him somewhere in Wyoming, not Colorado. The Washington mix-up won’t come as any surprise to politically disillusioned westerners used to people in the nation’s capital breezily getting everything wrong.

As CNN pointed out today, the press credential map shows California, Washington and Wyoming highlighted in white, with Seattle, San Jose, San Diego, Los Angeles and Denver listed as stops to raise campaign funds and tout his $477 billion jobs plan.

Problem is, Wyoming wasn’t actually on the agenda and likely wouldn’t be the friendliest of places to make his pitch for saving the economy. Swing-state Colorado, where Obama accepted the nomination to run for president in 2008 and in 2009 announced his massive stimulus package, makes a lot more sense as a stopover.

Whatever geographically challenged staffer produced the credential confusing the two rectangular states stacked on top of each other near the middle of the country probably wasn’t aware of the cross-border animosity.

Wyoming residents call Coloradans “greenies,” an allusion to Colorado license plates, and in many cases resent both the larger number of people who live in Colorado as well as Coloradans’ more politically progressive outlook on life.

Wyoming residents are particularly testy these days as Colorado officials eye a huge water grab that would pipe precious H2O out of southwestern Wyoming and spray it all over lawns up and down Colorado’s Front Range.

But if you’re inside the Beltway, anything west of the Mississippi and short of the Left Coast is one of those square states.

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Rep. Diana DeGette

Obama essentially defended the American airstrikes to support a then-collapsing rebellion against Libyan strongman Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi by saying the world could not stand by and watch a massacre. Also, Arab leaders and European nations backed the military action, which the president never deemed “war” in his 28-minute address.

“For generations, the United States of America has played a unique role as an anchor of global security and as an advocate for human freedom,” Obama said, according to a Politico transcript. “Mindful of the risks and costs of military action, we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world’s many challenges. But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act. That’s what happened in Libya over the course of these last six weeks.”

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, supported the president’s rationale, but he added that the rest of the world needs to now take the reins and enforce a no-fly zone. No Republican members of Colorado’s congressional delegation had posted statements regarding Obama’s speech on their websites as of 10 tonight.

Colorado Democrat Ed Perlmutter offered this statement:

“American combat forces have performed the mission they were asked to do with excellence and bravery. My thoughts are with the brave men and women of the US military and international coalition who are implementing the No Fly Zone and with the people of Libya fighting for democracy and basic human rights against a brutal dictator.

“I am encouraged by the success of the mission so far and the strong international coalition that is implementing the No Fly Zone. I look forward to the briefing Congress will get on Wednesday from the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense and other top administration officials. I will wait on further comment until my questions are answered at that time. Ultimately the future of Libya lies in the hands of the Libyan people.”

Michelle Obama

In the 1990s, Vail saw a series of high-profile leaders either on its slope during the winter months or for summer vacations. The late Princess Diana skied Vail in the early 1990s, setting off a skiing paparazzi frenzy, and President Bill Clinton also visited Vail during that same time period – but to play golf.

Vice President Dan Quayle learned to snowboard at Vail during the first Bush administration, and Clinton Vice President Al Gore made several trips to the Vail Valley, including to ski. Gore was in Aspen Friday evening, discussing the connection between global climate change and the mountain pine bark beetle epidemic that has killed millions of acres of pines trees in Colorado.

George W. Bush Vice President Dick Cheney frequently visited Beaver Creek during the summer for the conservative think tank the AEI World Forum, started by Ford. Cheney several years ago was accosted there by a Denver man angered by the Iraq war. Obama Vice President Joe Biden visited Vail for a skiing vacation last ski season.

According to the Vail Daily, Michelle Obama took her daughters to Ski Liberty in Pennsylvania last season. That was Malia and Sasha’s first ski trip. President Obama reportedly is not a skier.

Environment Colorado today issued a release ahead of the State of the Union address urging President Barack Obama “to protect the nation’s public health against threats from dirty energy lobbyists and their allies in Congress.”

“While laws like the Clean Air Act have helped to reduce emissions of many of the most dangerous pollutants, the job is far from done,” Environment Colorado field organizer Scott Wozencraft said. “Air pollution continues to cut short the lives of thousands of Americans each year, trigger tens of thousands of asthma attacks, poison our waterways with mercury and other toxins, and fuel global warming.”

Monday, Fort Collins-based Clean Water Action launched a door-to-door campaign called “Clean Air, Healthy Colorado” aimed at tracking the policies and statements of Gardner and Democratic U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and Mark Udall.

Gardner, a former state representative who beat out Democrat Betsy Markey in November, has been assigned to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The chairman of that committee, U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., earlier this month co-authored an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal targeting the “unconstitutional power grab” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in attempting to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

Gardner recently told the Fort Collins Coloradoan he will increase oversight in order to rein in regulators.

“Clearly, oversight is going to be a key feature, and that is not only limited to the energy side or the environment side, but the health-care side as well,” Gardner said. “And so oversight, and reining in what many members of the committee see as a rule-making, regulatory process that has gone unchecked.”

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2007 ruled that greenhouse gases are pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act, and in 2009 the EPA release two findings allowing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases.

“Using our door-to-door, phone, email, and mail outreach programs, Clean Water Action will give thousands of members in northern Colorado the opportunity to learn what their federal lawmakers are doing on key issues impacting clean air, clean water, and public health,” said Gary Wockner of Clean Water Action. “In addition, Coloradans need to know that the U.S. EPA is America’s front-line defender of the Clean Air Act, which supports clean energy that will create jobs and protect the economy.”

Last month the EPA announced its timeframe for setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions by power plants and refineries.

“As important as President Obama’s achievements have been for health care and the economy, for example, he will be remembered most for what he did about global climate change,” PCAP Executive Director William Becker said in a release. “If the United States and the rest of the international community don’t act aggressively, climate change will undo many of the accomplishments on which the president spent so much time and political capital during his first two years in office.”

Gary Hart

Hart and PCAP in August urged Obama to use his executive order powers ahead of November’s United Nations global climate change summit in Cancun, Mexico, after the U.S. Senate last session failed to pass any significant energy bills or even consider the cap-and-trade bill passed by the House.

“Even though Congress has decided not to take action on this matter in this calendar year, the president is going to have to represent the United States of America before the court of public opinion,” Hart said at the time. “We believe these actions in the form of executive orders and proclamations can demonstrate not only to Americans but to the world what leadership is.”

The group Monday underscored the national security and health benefits of building a “low-carbon economy,” which it maintains will help stabilize areas of the world that national security experts and former military analysts say will only become more volatile and deadly for Americans as the planet warms.

PCAP Monday did highlight some of the Obama administration’s accomplishments on climate change, but the group’s latest report outlines a laundry list of other actions the White House can take independent of what it terms congressional paralysis on the topic. Here’s that list as outlined in a PCAP press release on Monday:

• Convene the nation’s best minds to create policy roadmaps to a clean energy economy. Becker noted that although current law requires presidents to send Congress detailed national energy policy plans every two years, none has been done since 1998;

• Find new ways for the federal government to support climate action by states and local governments. Effective climate action will require active cooperation between all levels of government, Becker said;

• Continue using federal procurement, including the defense budget, to bolster markets for low-carbon goods and services;

• Take additional steps — for example, better management of land-based pollutants — to protect America’s limited supplies of fresh water and the health of its ocean and coastal resources;

• Accelerate efforts to create a national climate adaptation plan. According to the PCAP report, many of the natural disasters occurring worldwide now are recognized by scientists, heads of state and leaders in the insurance industry as proof that climate disruption already is underway;

• Take the case for climate action directly to the American people and communicate a compelling vision of the nation’s future.

Udall sent a letter to his colleagues in both the U.S. House and Senate asking them to break with the long tradition of partisan division during the speech, which is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 25. He said the split, with one party applauding and the other remaining silent, has come to symbolize the extreme partisanship of the last several years.

“The president’s State of the Union address sets the agenda for the year – the challenges and opportunities we face,” Udall said in a release. “But what Americans see when they watch it on TV is a Congress that is bitterly divided by party.

“It sets a negative tone that only perpetuates the narrative that Congress cannot – and will not – come together for the good of the country we all love. Beyond custom, there is no rule or reason that on this night we should emphasize divided government, separated by party, instead of being seen united as a country.”

Obama, speaking to the nation and a packed house at the University of Arizona Wednesday night, said more unites Americans than divides them, and he expressed his hope for more political unity in the wake of the shooting of Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson on Saturday. Udall’s letter used almost exactly the same words.

“After serving over a decade in the House and Senate, I know that more unites us than divides us, and now – more than ever – we need to find ways to dial down the political rhetoric and set a positive example for all Americans,” Udall said.

“Our country has been talking about changing the way Washington works, and now it’s time to take action by crossing the aisle and sitting together. It’s a simple step, but an important one that will go a long way in bridging our political divide. So I’m asking my colleagues to join me in sitting side-by-side in a symbolic gesture that reflects the diversity in the communities we represent.”

U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., Monday joined eight other Democrats in opposing the extension of Bush-era tax cuts, as the Senate overwhelming moved the measure forward in an 83-15 procedural vote.

“Just over one week ago, the Democratic and Republican chairmen of President Obama’s deficit commission called our national debt a ‘cancer’ that is threatening our country from within. They are right,” Udall said in a release.

“A massive budget deficit and a crippling national debt are perhaps the most difficult challenges our government faces. As Coloradans know, our national security depends on our economic security – and each is threatened by skyrocketing debt and irresponsible budgeting.”

Besides extending tax cuts for middle-class Americans and those making over $250,000 a year, the legislation also would extend unemployment benefits for millions of Americans right before the holidays.

Udall says the tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires will cost the country an additional $700 billion over the next decade — money that will be added on to the mounting tab owed to China.

“I urge my colleagues of both parties, as well as the President, to coalesce around a solution that makes sense for our economy: pass the middle class tax cuts that everyone agrees will help the economy – and avoid piling onto our national debt with unnecessary tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires,” Udall said. “Congress should stay working through the holidays to get that done. Hardworking Coloradans – who have been tightening their own budget belts – deserve no less.”

With the Christmas recess and the seating of a new Congress looming, the Senate kicked off what should be a make-or-break week for the prospect of extending unemployment benefits and tax cuts. The vote was on whether to end debate and take the real vote on the bill, which now includes the full compromise reached by President Obama and Republican leaders to extend all of the Bush tax cuts for two years and federal unemployment benefits for one year.

The bill now drops into the lap of the House, which is where the real uncertainty lies. On Thursday the House Democratic Caucus voted to reject that compromise bill, but that was a non-binding vote among Democrats only. If the bill comes to the floor of the House for a full vote, it should be passed by a fairly wide margin.

What the caucus vote does, however, is put pressure on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to refuse to bring the bill up for a floor vote unless changes are made. But with the Senate likely to approve the bill, that should ratchet up the pressure in the other direction as well.

There is another possibility, which is that the Senate passes the bill, the House then passes it with amendments and sends it back to the Senate. But that runs the risk of the Senate not passing the bill with the changes the House made and the whole thing ending in a standoff with no extension at all. That would leave it up to the next Congress to take the matter up.

As The Hill reports, the conventional wisdom in D.C. is that Pelosi will blink on this issue because she has little choice. She knows that if an extension is not passed before the Christmas recess the next Congress — controlled by Republicans — is likely to pass a considerably less generous extension, if one passes at all.

While all this is going on, more than a million Americans have already lost their unemployment benefits since the federal benefits lapsed at the end of November. Hundreds of thousands more will lose them every week until the benefits are restored.

Michigan Messenger’s Ed Brayton contributed to this report.

Scheduled for 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., Wednesday, activists will hold a rally and candlelight march around the capitol in Denver simultaneous to a national event at the White House. The goal is to highlight the need for a stronger U.S. leadership role leading up to the Cancun talks.

Colorado co-sponsors include: 1Sky, Colorado Interfaith Power and Light, Colorado Public Interest Research Group, Earth Guardians, Eco-Justice Ministries, Greenpeace, Grow Local Colorado, Protect Our Winters and Transition Denver.

“To make sure President Obama hears a powerful grassroots message about the need to reduce carbon emissions and support strong climate finance measures, 1Sky and the above partners are coming together for a national day of action during the first week of the Cancun talks,” 1Sky organizers said in a release.

The group went on to point out pending promises from U.N. climate talks last year in Copenhagen, which critics have blasted as largely a failure for U.S. policy, in part because of congressional gridlock on any sort of meaningful climate change legislation.

“At last year’s U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen, the U.S. agreed to reduce carbon pollution at home and help raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries cope with climate chaos, protect their forests and transition to clean energy,” 1Sky wrote.

“The U.S. must lead developed nations by setting up a global climate fund, similar to the current global HIV/AIDS fund, and mobilizing public funds to support and protect the world’s poor. In addition, as the world’s second largest carbon emitting country, the U.S. must keep commitments to reduce carbon emissions and transition to clean energy.”