Two of Colorado's Republican state senators rallied alongside other elected and community leaders in the nation's capital this week to protest federal energy policies that critics say squeeze the poor and increase the country's risky reliance on foreign oil.

The GOP's Sen. Mike Kopp, of Littleton, and Sen. Bill Cadman, of Colorado Springs, were among the featured speakers at the "Stop the War on the Poor" rally, organized by a coalition of minority-advocacy and other organizations. The more than two dozen leaders from the African-American, civil-rights, agricultural and consumer-rights communities joined forces to contend that federal policies raising the cost of energy disproportionately hurt the poor because low-income families must devote a larger portion of their income to energy costs than do others.

Federal policies that restrict domestic energy development also hold the country hostage to foreign sources, said Kopp, a board member of Colorado Veterans for Energy Security who served as an Army Ranger.

"For centuries now, America has committed her troops to fight and die on foreign fields of battle to secure a more, not less certain, future for all Americans," Kopp said after the rally.  "Today, that means securing an energy future by accelerating the production of all of the natural resources in our own backyard."