August 02, 2011 06:13 PM UTC

Colorado Delegation Explains Debt-Ceiling Votes

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• 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.