The Issues
DeGette has made public health and consumer protection her legislative priorities. Best known for championing stem-cell research, the congresswoman has also focused on expanding health-insurance programs for children and advocating for abortion rights.
Since January 2009, she has sat on the Natural Resources Committee. For the past decade, she has regularly introduced legislation seeking to designate more than one million acres in Colorado as wilderness area."I cannot… let every last acre of our state be sold to the highest bidder," she argued in 2007. DeGette, who did not get Republicans to hold a hearing on the bill when they controlled the House, was hopeful she could push it further once Democrats regained a majority; yet, even the 2007 version failed to get past the subcommittee stage.
DeGette was a critic of President Bush’s national security policies. She voted against the Patriot Act in 2001 and against the Iraq war resolution in 2002.
Stem-Cell Research
In summer 2008, DeGette published "Sex, Science, and Stem Cells: Inside the Right Assault on Reason," a book that condemns the politicization of science and argues that legislation on issues like abortion, birth control and funding for education programs should be based on science rather than religion. “Too many of our elected officials are simply incapable of thinking rationally about sex," she writes.
The issue that has come to define her congressional tenure is one she addresses in her book: stem-cell research. She seized on the topic even before President George W. Bush’s August 2001 executive order limiting federal funding to research on stem-cell lines already in existence. Determined to overcome the President’s constraints, she teamed up with Rep. Castle to sponsor legislation that would expand federally funded stem-cell research.
Their efforts paid off in spring 2005, when a GOP-controlled House adopted Castle and DeGette’s Stem-Cell Research Enhancement Act; The Rocky Mountain News called the 238-194 vote the “biggest triumph” of DeGette’s career.Yet, the House failed to override Bush’s veto – the very first of his presidency. During the 2006 midterm elections, DeGette traveled nationally to raise this issue in congressional races, but Bush’s veto of the bill’s 2007 version was also successful.
DeGette emerged victorious in 2009, when incoming President Barack Obama issued an executive order overturning Bush’s stem-cell policy. "Over 10 years of work trying to get sensible stem-cell policy, and literally with the stroke of a pen, it happened," she rejoiced. Yet, DeGette says she still wants to codify Obama’s order into law so the administrative change cannot be easily undone by a future administration.
DeGette has advocated increased access to birth control and pushed for federally-funded alternatives to abstinence-only sex education.
Public Health
DeGette long has concentrated on public-health issues – so much so that Hillary Rodham Clinton appointed her co-chair of her presidential campaign’s health care group. Concerned that children are left so vulnerable that it “should cause us to hang our collective head in shame," DeGette has prioritized health care for children. In 1999, she proposed legislation aiming to boost the number of them covered by the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and to streamline the application process.
From 2007 to 2009, DeGette played a major role in a standoff between the Bush White House and congressional Democrats over legislation to reauthorize SCHIP. In charge of lining up votes to override the president’s veto, DeGette argued for greatly expanding SCHIP’s scope. She advocated increasing the eligibility cap to 300 percent of poverty levels, raising federal tobacco taxes to allocate additional moneyand no longer requiring applicants to provide proof of citizenship. Dissatisfied with the bill Congress was set to pass in 2009, DeGette called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to push a bolder plan since the threat of a presidential veto had disappeared.
DeGette advocates reforming the food-safety system. Concerned that current law does not allow for an effective recall of contaminated products, she has authored legislation to give government the authority to force a mandatory recall and to establish a tracing system that could follow the movement of food products. In 2008, she pushed for a ban on phthalates in children’s products – a measure first proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).
Social Issues
As a member of the Colorado House, DeGette teamed up with state Sen. Mike Feeley (D-Colo.) to push through legislation requiring protesters to stay eight feet away from people entering an abortion clinic. In 2000, three years after striking down a New York law that established a 15-foot perimeter, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Colorado’s version in a 6-3 decision.
Now co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, DeGette plays a key role in legislative fights on abortion issues. For instance, she is currently looking to reverse regulations issued by the Bush administration that allow employees of publicly-funded health-care facilities to refuse to take part in services they find objectionable.
DeGette, who opposes the death penalty, has pushed for gun-control measures like banning assault-weapon ammunition and mandating trigger locks.
She is also supportive of gay rights. She favors legislation prohibiting job discrimination based on an individual’s sexual orientationand supports same-sex marriage, which she described in 2004 as “fundamentally a question of whether two people in a committed relationship should have the same rights as every other American couple.”
The Economy
In advocating for a strong social safety net, DeGette has expressed concern that cutting taxes tends to favor the rich and that Republican efforts to balance the budget are a pretext to undermine social protections. While she has said that she supports tax cuts for low income Americans, she denounced President Bush’s tax policies as “giveaways to the ultra wealthy.” DeGette voted against the GOP-backed overhaul of the Medicare system in 2003 and she opposes the privatization of Social Security.
In the fall of 2008, DeGette supported the financial bailout plan, explaining that the bill was needed to open up the credit market and to restore consumer confidence.
On two major occasions, DeGette broke with the majority of House Democrats to support free trade. In 2000, she was considered a key vote on a bill normalizing trade relations with China. Unions were so angry by her vote and by her later contention that she had felt threatened by labor groups that that the Teamsters endorsed DeGette’s Republican opponent in the 2002 general election
Second, DeGette voted in favor of the 2007 Peru free trade pact.By contrast, she sided with free trade skeptics in voting in 2002 against granting the president fast-track authority.
