Tag: Washington DC

In a new chapter of the often topsy-turvy story of the Tea Party era, Colorado Democratic US Rep Diana DeGette this week finds herself championing local government rights against Republican efforts to expand federal power. DeGette on Wednesday urged House and Senate appropriations committees staffers to reject legislative stipulations that aim to prohibit the District of Columbia government from using local tax dollars to pay for abortions as part of its employee insurance policies.

Newly elected GOP Colorado Congressman Cory Gardner told Politico today that he would resist the Washington siren song that has turned generations of small-government...

On the heels of a poll that shows Latino voter support for the Republican Party dropping into single digits, GOP senators are preparing to launch a new round of attacks on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Roll Call reports. Only 8 percent of Latino voters view the Republican Party favorably, compared with 86 percent who view it unfavorably, according to a nonpartisan Research 2000 poll released Monday by Daily Kos. That's down from the already low esteem Latino voters had for Republicans before the Sottomayor nomination, The Plum Line's Greg Sarget points out. In May, the GOP was viewed favorably by 11 percent of Latino voters and unfavorably by 79 percent.

Two state lawmakers from mountain districts are working Capitol Hill the next couple of days in a bid to get the federal government to find some funds to fight the growing mountain pine beetle infestation that has laid waste to more than 2 million acres of Colorado forest. State Rep. Christin Scanlan, D-Dillon, and state Sen. Dan Gibbs, D-Silverthorne, whose districts have been ravaged by the rice-sized bugs, testified before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forest and Public Lands Tuesday that resulting wildfires could knock out the nation’s electrical grid and spoil water supplies for millions of downstream consumers in other states.

One month after successfully tucking an amendment into the credit card reform bill that expanded gun rights, a small number of Senate Republicans are looking at the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act as another chance to score a victory for the Second Amendment. The plan — to add an amendment that would allow gun owners to carry their weapons from one state to another in accordance with concealed carry laws. The possible rationale — to defend gay rights.

Liberals love it. Conservatives hate it. Moderates have proposed some compromises, and the Obama administration is weighing ways to appease all camps. Whatever battles are brewing in this year’s looming health care reform debate, none is likely to reach the intensity of that over a government-sponsored insurance plan.

A show down between competing Democratic proposals to overhaul the nation's health insurance system is fracturing along ideological lines, writes The New York Times today.

Democratic leaders of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, including Denver Rep. Diana DeGette, introduced legislation yesterday granting the Food and Drug Administration more powers to monitor the nation’s food producers.

One of the two Coloradans who will actually have a vote whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor sits on the Supreme Court applauded the nomination Tuesday. U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, heaped praise on Sotomayor in a statement, calling her pick "historic" because she could be the first Hispanic on the court.

On the same day that the Labor Department reported 637,000 new jobless claims in the first week of May — up 32,000 from the week before — a group of Senate Democrats introduced legislation designed to fix the labor shortage facing the nation’s farms.