Colorado is Still Conservative

One of the reasons that the Republicans lost their majorities in the House and Senate was that they lost their way on spending. Elections can be bitter medicine.

Now comes Mark Udall and Bill Ritter trying to lobby or pressure the three remaining Colorado Republican representatives into changing their votes on SCHIP so that the President's veto can be overridden. The Rocky Mountain News observes:

The bills now before Congress could bring Colorado approximately $618.3 million in new federal funding for children's health coverage over the next five years, three times the amount the state would have otherwise gotten for SCHIP, according to the Colorado SCHIP Coalition, a coalition of business and health care groups.

The bill would allow families earning up to $80,000/year to go on the federal dole for their children's health care. The President has told congress that he will sign a more modest bill, so why aren't Mark Udall and Bill Ritter urging Democrats to pass a bill that the President can sign? The answer is simple. They don't want a reasonable bill. They want a political issue.

Our guess is that this kind of posturing won't help, and could hurt Mark Udall in the upcoming election. Colorado is still a conservative state.