Today is Sunday, May 26, 2013

Legislation

Sen. Mark Udall bloats Defense Dept. spending with green energy mandates

Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) is a leading spend and tax environmental extremist who is bragging about inflating the Defense Dept.'s budget with an amendment that will force it to waste billions on uneconomic green energy. 

In a letter to constituents, he wrote:

Last week, the U.S. Senate voted 62-37 in favor of my amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013, authorizing the Defense Department to continue its efforts to develop and use alternative fuels. I worked across the aisle to secure this bipartisan victory. Passage of this amendment, when signed into law, will ensure that our military has the resources it needs to develop and use advanced alternative fuels that bring down costs, improve mission capabilities and reduce the strategic vulnerabilities associated with a reliance on foreign fossil fuels.

Udall's up for re-election in 2014. Sadly, the GOP doesn't seem to have a strong challenger in the wings. So Udall can safely   promote unwise government spending and higher taxes to pay for that spending.

Frank McNulty backs Dick Wadhams for chair of Colorado GOP, opposes medical pot bill

Colorado House Speaker Frank McNulty said this morning that he backs Dick Wadhams for re-election as chairman of the Colorado Republican Party. McNulty told a breakfast meeting of the Arapahoe County Republican Mens (and women's) Club that Wadhams did a  very good job navigating Colorado Republicans through the 2010 elections. "Dick is the right guy to lead us through the 2012 elections," McNulty said. Wadhams has announced that he is running for a third two-year term as chair. A new GOP central committee will elect the state pary's chair on March 13.

In response to my question, McNulty also said that he opposes the Medical Marijuana bill (HB 1043), which would make it easier to grow, sell, prescribe and buy pot. He said pot legislation "will go through several iterations" in the 2011 session of the General Assembly.

In response to a question about cutting the car tax increase that was enacted last year, McNulty said cutting would be a symbolic victory and that he is focused on winning real victories, not symbolic ones. In other words, he's not going to make repealing FASTER or cutting the car tax until he achieves his major goals.

McNulty said that the top priority for House Republicans is to cut state spending and to reform job killing regulations on the oil and gas and other industries. His second and fall back priority, he said, is to stop the Democrat-controlled Senate and Gov. John Hickenlooper from increasing spending.

However, McNulty said, he is not for cutting spending on K-12 education.

Higher education is another story, he said. The most money in the state budget that can be cut goes for higher education, which will take a hit, McNulty said.

When I asked whether the legislature can take power away from the faculty in higher education so that they no longer can block cost cutting efforts, McNulty said that Republicans will try to give the top executives and boards of the state's universities and community colleges more power to cut costs by reforming civil service laws that make it very difficult for them to layoff people. 

I hope to post clips of McNulty's comments this evening.

LINKS:

Medical Marijuana (HB11-1043.

Colorado Republicans take state’s House; Dems control state Senate

Colorado's Republicans apparently have taken control of the state's House, but not the Senate. This will give the GOP a small say in the redistricting of the state in 2011, but the Democrats will pretty much have their way with a Democrat-controlled Senate, a Democrat governor and a Democrat-controlled state Supreme Court. At the least, the House Republicans should be unified enough to keep Hickenlooper and the Senate Demcrats from raising taxes or fees, but they won't get any  tax cuts passed. Time will tell whether the very liberal spend and tax Senate will work with the Republicans and Governor-elect John Hickenlooper to cut spending, not just the rate of growth in spending.

Colorado Senate Republicans promise to modernize, streamline, reduce size of state’s government

Chances are growing that Republicans will take over Colorado's House and Senate. Here's the agenda of the Senate Republicans:

John Hickenlooper’s ‘voluntary tax’ on oil and gas industry would be ‘extortion,’ Tom Tancredo says

During last Friday's debate, John Hickenlooper said that he would fund higher education in Colorado with a "voluntary tax" on the highly regulated oil and gas exploration and production industries in the state.

That would be "extortion", charged Tom Tancredo, who has promised to not raise any taxes or fees if he is elected governor. Tancredo pointed out that because if Hickenlooper becomes governor and asks the oil and gas industry to accept a voluntary tax, they would have no choice to but to agree. If they didn't agree to the voluntary tax, Hickenlooper would impose even tougher regulations on them than Gov. Bill Ritter has. The Ritter regulations on Colorado's oil and gas producers has cost the state thousands of jobs, according to Repubicans. Democrats say the jobs have been lost because of sharply depressed natural gas prices. There's some truth in both arguments. Tancredo spoke to a rally in Littleton Saturday evening.

Do Colorado liberals have secret plan for tax hikes?

Gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo and a mysterious advertiser on the radio are warning that a secretive group of Colorado liberals and special interest groups including unions and government contractors are planning to push tax increases after the election. Colorado Jobs Alliance, a registered 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organization has published its report on the Colorado Reform Roundtable's  "Secret tax hike" and Tancredo says he will stop the tax hike in its tracks.

Durango Herald ‘NO’ on Amendments 60, 61, 62, 63 and Prop. 101

The Durango Herald says vote note on the tax cutting Amendments 60 and 61 and on the tax cutting proposition 101. It also opposes the anti-contraception, anti-abortion personhood Amendment 62 and the anti-ObamaCare Amendment 63. 

State Rep. Cindy Acree has agenda for improving Medicaid

Since Medicaid was created in 1965, politicians have been trying to "fix" Medicaid, the Federal and States program that pays for health care for mostly women and children in poverty. 

Tom Tancredo’s applause lines

Every successful politician has "applause lines" that get audience reactions every time they are used. Tom Tancredo, the American Constitution/Republican Party candidate for governor of Colorado, has several such lines, which he used at Monday night's Elevate Colorado candidate's forum in Glendale.

Tancredo's applause lines include his promise to tell his department heads to bring him plans to cut their budgets by 10%, his proposal to cut at least some of the $158 million a year in benefits that the Democrats have added to the state's Medicaid program, his plan to turn PERA into a defined contribution plan instead of a defined benefit plan and his advocacy of vouchers for charter schools. The biggest round of applause came when former Governor Dick Lamm, a Democrat who backs Tancredo's opponent, John Hickenlooper, complemented Tancredo for putting the most substantial ideas on the table.

Tom Tancredo calls for special session of Colorado General Assembly to deal with budget deficit

Conservative gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo today called on Governor Bill Ritter to call a special session of the Colorado General Assembly to deal with the state’s soaring budget deficit, and he challenged Governor-elect John Hickenlooper to join him in calling for the special session. In a statement, Tancredo said Colorado’s government must be restructured and that every budget item but the possibility of tax increases should be on the table. If elected governor, Tancredo said, he would direct his cabinet to identify 10% across the board budget cuts. Given the huge increases in state spending over the last six years by the Democrat-controlled legislature, it shouldn’t be hard to restructure the state’s laws and regulations and find savings of more than 20%. Statement follows:

With Colorado facing $1 billion budget deficit next year, Amendments 60 and 61, Prop. 101 not smart

Colorado is facing a $1 billion budget deficit in fiscal year 2012, and that makes the tax-cutting Amendments 60 and 61 and Proposition 101 look unwise. Of course, contractors who slop at the pork trough of Colorado taxpayers are against the “Ugly three” and have raised millions for the fight to keep Colorado taxes high and themselves in business. I continue to have mixed feelings about these ballot initiatives. Colorado should restructure its laws and regulations to make government more cost effective and affordable under the economic conditions that we’ll be living with. But these initiatives seem to be asking for too much change too quickly, and they probably should go down to defeat. This ad makes the case for maintaining bloated government:

Colorado Senate GOP announces economic platform

State Senate Minority Leader Mike Kopp announces the senate Republicans’ economic agenda for Colorado. Senate Republicans get it. Colorado needs to restructure its laws and regulations to make them easier and less costly for the state to administer and enforce. That would make it easier and less costly for employers to comply with state laws and regulations. If Republicans can get the new governor to go along with agenda, Colorado will be one of the most competitive states in the country when it comes to economic development, creating new jobs and defending existing jobs in the state.

The announcement follows:

6 ways Tom Tancredo beats John Hickenlooper on the issues

Tom Tancredo is going to give Obama Democrat John Hickenlooper a strong run and may even beat the Denver mayor on the issues. In Friday’s debate on Channel 12, which can be viewed on Denver’s CBS4, Tancredo attacked Hickenlooper on education, taxes, spending, running a sanctuary city, bilingual ballots, and PERA. Hickenlooper did himself no favors with his endorsements of ObamaCare, printing ballots in Spanish as well as in English and in his denials that he runs a sanctuary city and would make Colorado a sanctuary state. And Hick’s double talk about why he won’t disclose his 20-year-record of giving to ACORN and other hard left groups just won’t wash with Republicans or independents. You can summarize the debate this way:

Tom Tancredo: Ask voters to change Amendment 23, Gallagher Amendment; promises to take on unions

Gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo said that if he is elected governor in November, he will ask voters and the legislature to make major changes in the state’s constitution and laws that would put the emphasis on reducing spending rather than on figuring out how to increase taxes and spending.

Colorado a leader in state employees’ pension reforms and PERA

In the last session of the Colorado General Assembly, a bi-partisan coalition passed cuts in state employees’ benefits annual cost of living increases so that PERA will be more likely to be able to pay pensions down the road. Ron Lieber calls the legislature’s action courageous. Pensioners are suing over breach of contract. And gubernatorial candidate, Tom Tancredo, says the legislature didn’t go far enough. He told a recent press conference that more needs to be done to protect taxpayers from having to bear the cost of making up for PERA’s under funded liabilities. PERA is the agency that administers pensions for employes of the state of Colorado and other governmental employers in the state. Your homework is here and here.