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In my mailbox recently, I found yet another Report to
Constituents from Congressman Doug Lamborn.
Like the
others, it was printed in full color on heavy, glossy stock
and featured a mountain.
Oddly for a Colorado Republican (recall the Alaskan peak used by Bob Schaffer last year and more recently, the Canadian scenery from Scott McInnis), the Lamborn mountain was actually in Colorado -- a fall shot of Pikes Peak from the Garden of the Gods.
Lamborn's Report
is titled The Federal Budget
Impact on Colorado's 5th Congressional District.
The 5th District has been around since Colorado gained a seat after the 1970 census, and it has never elected a Democrat. That's because it is dominated by Colorado Springs and El Paso County, and James Dobson will come out in support of gay polygamy long before the district is remotely competitive.
The district also includes most of Park County and all of Teller, Frémont, Lake and Chaffee, where I live. We're so unimportant that our county gets switched around to equalize populations. We were in the 3rd District in the 1970s, the 5th in the 80s, the 3rd in the 90s, and back to the 5th in the 00s. I'd predict another move to the 3rd after the 2010 census, but that makes too much sense.
Our Representative Lamborn has a staff, and he can draw
on the Congressional Budget Office and the Congressional
Research Service. So it seemed reasonable to look for some
details about the Federal Budget Impact on Colorado's
5th Congressional District.
For instance, how might changes in military priorities
-- the shift in focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, for
instance -- affect the military installations in the
district: Fort Carson, Peterson and Schriever Air Force
bases, the U.S. Air Force Academy and the North American
Air Defense Command. No matter how much Lamborn talks about
avoiding dependence on government,
those government
payrolls are important.
Or we could consider public-lands management. Will the federal budget help with the killer-beetle infestation now working its way south into the forests of Lake County? Should it? How much of the Forest Service budget should go to providing recreational facilities? Does the BLM need more staff to enforce its regulations, or is it adequately funded for its responsibilities?
What about energy development? Will federal support for
green energy
translate into some money up here where
we've got plenty of wind and sunshine?
How much stimulus money are we getting? Is it being wasted, or going to infrastructure that will endure?
Those are a few of the issues Lamborn might have
addressed if he were actually reporting to his constituents
about the federal budget. But instead, when you turn over
the glossy report card, there's a line graph that shows
projected annual deficits climbing to the stratosphere
under the majority budget agenda
and declining with
the minority budget solution.
It looks ominous, but I remember seeing charts like this a decade ago which showed that the national debt would be paid off by now. In other words, these projections don't mean much.
Lamborn's report
is about 500 words of generic
boilerplate from the Republican Study Commission, a caucus
of right-thinking representatives which comes up with an
alternative budget every year.
That's what opposition parties are supposed to do -- propose a different course. But should it be produced and mailed at taxpayer expense? And should it be called a report to Colorado's 5th District, when it contains not one word specific to this district? It's so generic that it could be used in 434 other congressional districts.
I've got a question for Colorado Springs. What did we ever do to you to cause you to give us Lamborn?
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