By Doug Lamborn There is a growing consensus in Washington that 2021 will see a flattening of U.S. defense spending in fiscal 2022 and beyond. This is even more likely under the incoming Biden administration, despite consistent testimony by our military leaders that we need 3-5 percent real growth in the defense budget to maintain our competitive edge over our near-peer competitors, Russia and China. Tough choices will have to be made, but the priority in our reorientation toward great power competition should be shoring up American space dominance. Some of our nation's most experienced space war fighters have explained why this is the case. The goal of reorganizing national security space was always to move quickly, keep costs low and eliminate stifling bureaucracy. This is so we can provide our space war fighters the increased authorities and resources needed to maintain our space dominance. As Gen. John "Jay" Raymond, the Space Force's chief of space operations, said last month, Space Force and Space Command have to stay "lean, agile and fast." I have had the privilege of being a part of this grand initiative since its beginning, when a bipartisan effort at reforming our national security space enterprise was launched by the House Strategic Forces Subcommittee in 2016. I helped fight for these reforms, led by Reps. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., partly because I knew our country had the necessary personnel and infrastructure already -- it is in Colorado Springs and always has been. We simply needed as a country to get administrative roadblocks out of the way to enable our space professionals to excel. From 1985 until 2002, U.S. Space Command's headquarters was in Colorado Springs. Since August 2019, it is back in Colorado Springs on a provisional basis. Even when the space war-fighting function fell under U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska, from 2002-2019, the men and women executing the mission remained in Colorado. As such, America's space war-fighting ecosystem has grown up along the Front Range of Colorado. Taxpayers have invested billions of dollars into Colorado Springs, much of which would be squandered if USSPACECOM is uprooted. In the past 15 years, over $350 million has been spent by the Department of Defense on space-specific infrastructure in Colorado. This does not account for the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars invested annually into space-related operations and maintenance or research and development funds executed in Colorado Springs. USSPACECOM and U.S. Northern Command on Peterson Air Force Base, and the National Space Defense Center and the Missile Defense Integration and Operations Center on Schriever Air Force Base, account for a half-billion dollars of the DoD's budget each year. While other communities may lay claim to various space industry activities such as launch or research and development, Colorado Springs is where the space war-fighting mission takes place. Uniformed men and women, and their counterparts in the intelligence community, sit side by side 24/7/365, operating our space assets and responding to threats. Joint Task Force-Space Defense, the action arm of USSPACECOM, works out of the National Space Defense Center. This state-of-the-art facility is supported by a host of civilian contractors and DoD civilian employees working on special access programs and systems at the highest levels of classification within the defense and intelligence communities. Modern headquarters infrastructure for a combatant command is expensive. The most recent example, USSTRATCOM's new $1.3 billion headquarters facility in Omaha, was completed last year after years of delays caused by flooding and a ballooning budget. The move to a new headquarters building alone cost $617 million. This demonstrates the money, time and work it will take to get a combatant command up and running at a new location. There will be some new construction costs if Space Command remains at Peterson Air Force Base, but not as much as starting from scratch. More importantly, Colorado Springs can handle and is handling the mission right now. When USSPACECOM was reactivated, it was placed in Colorado Springs because that's where the infrastructure that our space war fighters need to succeed exists right now. That's because the threat to our space assets exists right now. USSPACECOM just announced that Russia conducted a test of a direct-ascent anti-satellite missile. This is Moscow's second test of an anti-satellite weapon in 2020. Meanwhile, China is much more secretive about its growing space capabilities. Its increasing activity on the moon concerns DoD officials, given its strategic location as the ultimate high ground. Since the Gulf War, when we demonstrated how powerful our space-supported modern military can be, unfriendly regimes have pursued counter-space capabilities to neutralize our advantages. It's imperative we prevent this from happening. It is not just our military which relies on U.S. space assets -- the entire global financial system relies on the American GPS constellation's timing signal to provide an ultraprecise time stamp on every electronic financial transaction. GPS locating, used for countless applications, also depends on our satellites. Our nation simply does not have time to fiddle around with moving USSPACECOM. There is no strategic value in moving it when it is working superbly now. Every defense dollar spent relocating USSPACECOM is one dollar not available to enhance our space war-fighting capabilities. To quote my friend and colleague on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Jim Cooper: "I am shocked by the announcement of a billion-dollar competition for a new U.S. Space Command headquarters. This is worse than a boondoggle; it's a moondoggle." Reps. Cooper and Mike Rogers, the current chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee and the incoming ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, respectively, worked together to establish "a lean and agile organization that repurposed Air Force funds to protect U.S. assets in space." This is exactly what we accomplished and why I was glad to join them in this vital effort. For all these reasons, it is in our nation's fiscal and security interests to keep U.S. Space Command in its true home -- Colorado Springs.

By Rep. Doug Lamborn It is now November 2021, one year after Joe Biden was elected president after a razor-thin election. We have been given a glimpse into the future to see Biden's America. Summer 2021 was another scorcher. The rolling brownouts California suffered in 2020 spread throughout the West. Record demand for air conditioning combined with the ongoing closures of coal, nuclear, and even gas-powered electric plants have left millions powerless in these heat waves. Energy Secretary Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with the support of President Biden, has permanently extended the airlines' drastic curtailments of flights, first seen during the late pandemic, in keeping with the Green New Deal they both support. Taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel have shot up to European levels "to discourage internal combustion engine use and to promote jobs in the alternative transportation industry, especially the manufacture of bicycles." The Ferguson effect, where law enforcement pulls back in the wake of hostility, lawsuits, and violent crime increases, and seen in 2020 in certain cities such as Seattle, Portland, Chicago, and Minneapolis, has extended to hundreds of major cities. Attorney General Lori Lightfoot, former mayor of Chicago, has called for a blue-ribbon commission on how to best spend the mandatory 30% diversion of police funds to social service agencies that the Democratic U.S. House and Senate mandated. Although Biden said during the 2020 campaign that he did not support defunding the police, he never denounced violence and rioting in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests. This was seen as a green light by progressives in Congress to divert money from law enforcement nationally, or else state and local governments would lose federal funding. Because Biden has been making fewer and fewer public appearances, his ability to impose his will on Congress has diminished. Rumors have circulated, but his advisers remain tight-lipped about his medical and mental condition. The economy has never recovered from what was hoped to be a temporary pullback during the pandemic. Even liberal experts agree with conservatives that the reversal of President Trump's tax cuts by the new Congress did serious damage to economic investment and job growth. The difference between the two camps, though, is that liberal economists see a benefit to the lower standards of living. According to Treasury Secretary Elizabeth Warren, "When everyone's income goes down, as long as the income of those who are wealthier go down more, the result is more equality." Identity politics has expanded. Vice President Kamala Harris, who was chosen by Biden because she checked three boxes as a progressive woman of color, was designated by him as the czar in charge of "remedying historical grievances." The 1619 Project, claiming that America was founded to promote slavery and first pushed by the New York Times, has been adopted as mandatory reading by the majority of public school districts in the country. This was after a guidance letter went out from her office to school districts nationwide, telling them to incorporate the 1619 Project or face liability exposure on civil rights grounds. The fact that the 1619 Project is opposed by liberal and conservative historians alike, and also ignores the abolition movement, are not considered significant by the Biden administration. In foreign affairs, Biden has attempted to resurrect the Obama-era agreement with Iran to keep it from developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Reversing all the Trump sanctions as a unilateral peace gesture to the regime did not work -- Iran has ramped up its 20,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges, which mostly had been in storage prior to the election. National security adviser Adam Schiff has stated publicly that "Iran must curtail its nuclear efforts or face the consequences." But when pressed, he could not say what those consequences would be. He said he hoped that discussions with the European Union, Russia, and China about how to deal with the Iranian crisis would find common ground for the first time. The new Democratic Congress has cut funding to the Department of Defense under pressure from the newly empowered progressive wing of the Democratic Party. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have been reacting to the painful cuts by triaging their defense priorities. Adversaries have shown signs of challenging U.S. interests abroad to exploit new weaknesses in American forces. The one bright spot in Biden's America over the last 12 months has been in healthcare. When the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed led to a vaccine in record time, Americans, for the most part, decided they were tired of seclusion and took the vaccine. Even Democratic governors lifted coronavirus restrictions, employees went back to work, schools and universities reopened for the spring semester, sports teams played in front of fans, and the atmosphere of fear went away. Defeating the pandemic is now acknowledged by pundits on both ends of the spectrum as Trump's finest hour. The vaccine came out two weeks after the November election.

Coronavirus pandemic Select a topic from the dropdown below to learn more.Political responses overviewState reopening plansDocumenting America's Path to RecoveryDaily updatesElection changesChanges to vote-by-mail and absentee voting proceduresFederal responsesState responsesState executive ordersStay-at-home ordersMultistate agreementsNon-governmental reopening plansEvictions and foreclosures policiesTravel restrictionsEnacted state legislationState legislative session changesSchool closuresState court closuresInmate releasesLocal government responsesDiagnosed or quarantined politiciansBallot measure changesArguments about government responsesThe 1918 influenza pandemicPandemic Response Accountability CommitteeUnemployment filingsLawsuitsSubmit On November 18, 2020, Lamborn announced that he had tested positive for coronavirus.