Fighting for Hometown Values

Fighting for Hometown Values

Dear Friends,

I kicked off a busy three-week session of Congress working hard and focusing on representing the hometown values of Colorado’s Third Congressional District. I opposed overreaching legislation threatening the safety of women and girls, wasting our tax dollars bailing out blue states, and seizing 550,000 acres of land in our District.

Legislative Leadership

Protecting Women and Young Girls

I adamantly oppose the Equality Act’s efforts to take away the safety and security of women and young girls. This bill allows biological males to share locker rooms with biological females. Additionally, it creates an unsafe and uneven playing field for female athletes who risk getting injured competing against biological males. The Equality Act also takes away safe spaces for women by mandating that domestic violence shelters, intensive counseling facilities, and prisons house biological males and females together.

In addition to its attack on women, the Equality Act also threatens the family. Provisions in the bill allow government bureaucrats to seize children if their parents refuse to allow them to undergo life-altering transgender surgery that could lead to sterilization, hormone imbalances, and major medical complications. This radical legislation also requires healthcare workers to perform taxpayer-funded abortions and sex change surgeries—even if it goes against their deeply held religious and moral beliefs. I will always support the Constitutional rights of Americans, so I was proud to speak against this radical bill on the House Floor.

Protecting Your Tax Dollars

I opposed the “COVID relief package” which is really just a partisan $1.9 trillion spending spree. $1.9 trillion should be able to give each American $5,700 in stimulus money, but the bill only delivers $1,400 per person. Furthermore, less than 9% of the money goes to public health efforts. So where does it all go?  $510 billion goes to a blue state bailout, $12 billion goes to foreign aid, and $135 million goes to the National Endowment for the Arts. This bill also allows money to flow to Planned Parenthood and other pet organizations that support liberal causes. Given the amount of cherry-picking in this opportunistic legislation, I cannot support it as a legitimate policy to fight COVID. I released a video explaining why I cannot in good conscience vote for this partisan bill.

While some politicians claim that we need to pass this bill urgently in order to get through the pandemic, we still have $1 trillion left in unspent federal money that was passed in previous COVID relief packages. We have already spent billions to open schools that remain closed. There are no provisions in this bill that provide a clear plan to getting the country back to normal—it just serves to give D.C. politicians the opportunity to spend more money.

Protecting our Land

After a year of burdensome lockdowns and overreaching intrusions into our daily lives, the last thing Americans need are more government regulations. But this is exactly what House Democrats have in mind. One of their first orders of business for the 117th Congress was to pass H.R. 803, the “Protecting America’s Wilderness and Public Lands Act,” locking up 1.5 million acres of new wilderness, halting recreational use of existing land, stifling responsible energy development, and killing even more jobs in our fragile economy that is already suffering from the pandemic.

Most importantly, this bill is a disaster for national security. Even though the United States could be energy independent, leftists would rather import oil from hostile countries than drill here with responsible environmental practices. There is no reason for America to be dependent on our enemies. Even more concerning than the loss of oil and natural gas resources, this ill-advised bill would dramatically reduce the amount of uranium able to be mined in the United States. Half of our uranium supply already comes from hostile countries, and this number will only go up if we pass this bill, leaving our electrical grid and naval fleet vulnerable.

The Democrat sponsors of this bill did not take time to consult with the local communities affected by it. If they had, perhaps they would have heard about the problems posed by the loss of water rights, job killing regulations, and recreational restrictions. Most importantly, perhaps they would have heard that 2020 was a record-breaking fire season, and that the unscientific prohibitions on fire management in this bill will cause more burnt-down homes, ruined livelihoods, and lost lives. It is easy for Denver and D.C. politicians to regulate how other people can protect themselves from wildfires, but how would they feel if their homes, families, businesses, and livestock were at risk of going up in flames? I say we torch this bill instead of letting our communities burn.

The Mesa County Commissioners, Montezuma County Commissioners, Dolores County Commissioners, Archuleta County Commissioners, White River and Douglas Creek Conservation Districts, the Colorado Farm Bureau and numerous other constituencies in Colorado strongly opposed H.R. 803 because of the damage they know it will cause and activities it will prevent.

The Grand Junction Chamber sent me a letter opposing this bill stating, “These are lands that are literally in our backyard in Mesa County yet Congresswoman DeGette continues to ignore us, does not meet with us, and does not even consider the consequences of her bill on the hardworking families of our areas.”

I am proud to have voted against H.R. 803 and led the opposition in a House Floor speech and testimony opposing this landgrab.

I also authored and sponsored 11 amendments to protect the Third District from this job-killing bill that seeks to keep the American people from utilizing their public lands. Additionally, I worked with my colleagues to lead 9 other amendments that I cosponsored to fight this massive landgrab.

Read more about my efforts and the support from local communities HERE.

Putting Taxpayers First

I wrote a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig calling for him to look into reports of law-abiding citizens in my District who filed their taxes on time but then received letters threatening federal liens, seizure of property, and garnishment of wages. My hardworking constituents spent hours on the phone with the IRS, experienced tremendous stress and fear, and were threatened due to no fault of their own, but rather, because the IRS has a huge problem with the backlogged tax return processing system.

I will continue to fight for accountability in the tax system, and I will make sure that law-abiding citizens have a defender to help them navigate issues with federal agencies. If there is anything my office can help you with, please don’t hesitate to ask for help.