DENVER—Some Democratic legislators said Tuesday the war in Iraq and the military budget are draining money from Colorado and other states, and they want people to know about it.
“We have to start telling people why we don’t have money to do things,” state Rep. Alice Borodkin said.
Borodkin, of Denver, said she plans to hold a series of meetings with voters to discuss the issue.
Democratic state Sen. Moe Keller of Wheat Ridge, a member of the Joint Budget Committee, said lawmakers have a right to discuss Iraq war spending because it left less funding for states.
Last year, the federal government cut $16.5 million in homeland security grants and $11.8 million in criminal justice funding for Colorado, Keller said. The federal government has also told Colorado it will no longer reimburse the state for the cost of imprisoning illegal immigrants convicted of felonies, Keller said.
Georgia state Sen. Nan Grogan Orrock, who spoke to Colorado lawmakers Tuesday at Borodkin’s invitation, estimated that Colorado taxpayers have paid about $7 billion toward the nearly $500 billion the federal government has spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Orrock, a Democrat and a member of the nonpartisan Women Legislators’ Lobby, said the Iraq war is drawing more attention to the proportion of the budget that has gone to the military under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Colorado House Minority Leader Mike May, a Republican from Parker, said he hopes Democrats don’t try to reintroduce a resolution passed by the Legislature last year that expressed displeasure with the war but stopped short of specifically criticizing President Bush’s decision to send more troops.
May said the additional troops have helped, and that has quieted some Democratic critics of the war.
