Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper threw a wrench in Senate plans to start work on a government funding package before heading home for the holidays.
The two Democrats put a hold on the so-called mini-bus package over the Trump Administration’s decision to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.
“President Trump is attacking Colorado because we refuse to bend to his corrupt administration. His reckless decision to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research will have lasting, devastating impacts across the country,” Bennet and Hickenlooper said in a joint statement.
Hickenlooper told The Hill that the hold is to ensure that funding for NCAR in the budget bill is “used to keep it open (and) we don’t cancel it.”
In a social media post, Bennet, who is also running for governor, said “when Trump comes after Colorado, we don’t back down, we fight back.”
In announcing the “break up” of NCAR, Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management, said
it was “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”
Many Colorado Democrats viewed the move to dismantle NCAR as retaliation over the state’s decision not to hand over or release former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who is currently serving a nine year state sentence.
Vought also highlighted two other cuts specifically for Colorado — the scrapping of $109 million in environmental transportation grants and of $615 million in Department of Energy grant funding — on his social media right before the NCAR post.
Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse told CPR News it was “clearly retaliatory action by the Trump administration connected to the state’s refusal to honor the lawless request by the Trump administration for the release of Tina Peters.”
Neguse defended NCAR’s work, saying it is “nonpartisan in nature. It is fundamentally about science, climate adaptation, weather forecasting, and other matters that are critical to our nation's national security.”
All week, Senate Republican leaders had been working to clear objections on their side to quick passage of the package that would fund the departments of Education, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Transportation, Housing and Human and Development, Labor, and Interior.
The hold puts a speed bump into plans for quick passage of the bipartisan spending package, something Leader John Thune acknowledged to reporters Thursday night.
“I’m sure there’ll be some conversations about that over the next couple of weeks. Then we’ll figure out a path forward,” he told reporters.
Without an agreement to move the package quickly, Thune will have to use up valuable floor time and even then, getting the necessary 60 votes to advance the bill is not guaranteed.
Funding for most of the government runs out on January 30.
