U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., was in Denver last week to endorse Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. She stopped by The Denver Post to meet with the editorial board.

Today's Q&A with DeGette is our fourth installment of "A Conversation With ... ," an occasional multimedia report on the people and issues that shape our times.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado made news this past week by endorsing Sen. Hillary Clinton for president. She'll be back in the spotlight in coming weeks as she continues her fight for federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research in light of a promising new study that ordinary skin cells can be transformed into embryonic stem cells.

POST: What do you think

DeGette Video

  • Watch video as U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette discusses stem cell research with The Post's editorial board.
about last week's developments?

DeGETTE: To take adult stem cells and make them essential to other kinds of cells is a big breakthrough. But I would also sound a cautionary note that this research is really still in its nascent stages, and it is not â€" certainly at this point â€" a substitute for other kinds of research, like embryonic stem-cell research.

The religious right and the White House, every time there's some other breakthrough, they want to say that's a substitute for embryonic stem-cell research. In fact, we don't know which of these types of research will end up being the research that will end up curing all these diseases.

What we do know is embryonic stem-cell research is almost 10 years ahead of this new type of discovery, and so there are a lot of advances coming, particularly out of Great Britain and some other countries, on skin regeneration on macular degeneration.

I expect you'll see some big announcement in the next few months about embryonic stem cell research or somatic cell nuclear transfer or some other technique. What this all points out to me is that Congress needs to stop playing God, Congress and the White House need to stop telling researchers what types of cell research they should be doing.

POST: Do you foresee yourself running another embryonic stem-cell bill?

DeGETTE: I certainly do intend to reintroduce the bill, but we may want to look at other ways to move the issue.

We are so close on the research with so many of these diseases. One of my colleagues, Jim Langevin of Rhode Island, he's been in a wheelchair since he had a gun accident. You know they're close to nerve regeneration, they're close with the islet cell regeneration with diabetics. What it's going to take is some serious attention and resources through the NIH to all of this research.

I'm not going to say it's embryonic stem-cell research or it's adult stem-cell research or it's somatic cell nuclear transfer. Everybody was really happy to see that research announced last week, but ... we've got to think really hard about the ethics of what we're doing.

I went to England a couple of years ago. They have a whole system that they set up around the time in vitro fertilization clinics were set up. A board reviews all research proposals, not just embryonic stem-cell proposals, but anything having to do with these kinds of research.

The board is composed of researchers who don't have a financial interest, lay people and elected officials. And before someone can do this research in Great Britain, they have to submit a proposal to this board. We don't have anything like that in this country, even for the federal-funded lines of embryonic stem-cell research. We don't have any code of ethics for that or any ethical review.

POST: What do you see happening with SCHIP?

DeGETTE: I think in the end we're going to have to do a one-year extension of the bill and we'll have to come back and talk about it next fall. In some ways, if we extend SCHIP for one year, it's almost better than some of these proposals people have been making it's the current system and it has more eligibility. Colorado is going to really be hit financially if it has to keep enrolling kids and keep bringing them into SCHIP without the additional funding.

Right now in this country we have 6 million kids on SCHIP. We have an additional 6 million kids eligible who aren't enrolled, primarily because we don't have the resources to do outreach and enrollment and keep them in the program.

The president says $5 billion and the Democrats say $35 billion, and everybody admits the president's money would be far insufficient to even fund the kids who are on SCHIP now. So if we agreed to that, we'd have to drop kids who are on the rolls now. Who are we as Congress to pick? People from other countries think it's absolutely insane we have 9 million kids in this country who are uninsured. Six million of them are eligible for SCHIP.

POST: What's the status of the energy bill?

DeGETTE: I've been championing that standard in the Energy and Commerce Committee, but we never got the bill on the floor because the Republicans didn't want to see it.

As we begin to do more renewable energy, the energy economics will shift to the West in a really exciting way. We're having informal talks, we're about two votes short in the Senate to do a renewable portfolio standards bill. We'll know in about two weeks whether we have enough votes. I think we may pass something before the end of the year.

POST: Congress has very low approval ratings. Do you think the people thought they'd elect Democrats and they would end the war?

DeGETTE: Absolutely. It's frustrating for all of us. It would be difficult to end the war because Congress gave the president war powers. Now we can either rescind the war powers, which we don't have the votes to do, or we can not fund it.

What we've done is begin to reverse the course of the war. The president is now starting to withdraw some troops, public opinion is still very much against the war, and at least the situation hasn't gotten worse. We're also having aggressive oversight hearings on the war and other issues that would never have happened.