Some members of Colorado’s Congressional delegation recently renewed their tough talk over North Korea and its development of nuclear missiles.

Rep. Doug Lamborn is calling for Congress to ramp up the nation’s missile defenses as North Korea continues to hurl threats against the United States and its other adversaries.

Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and co-chair of the House Missile Defense Caucus. He advocates putting more money into the Defense Department budget for high-tech systems, such as the Multi-Object Kill Vehicle and the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 anti-missile system.

“North Korea’s saber-rattling and over-the-top rhetoric is not new, but [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-un’s fanatical focus on developing nuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of ranging the United States and our allies should redouble our efforts to focus on missile defense,” Lamborn said in an op-ed he wrote the the political newspaper The Hill. “To be clear, North Korea cannot be a state with the capability to employ a nuclear weapon in the first place but we have to prepare for all contingencies.”

Days later, Republican Sen. Cory Gardner issued a statement commending the U.S. Treasury Department for its new sanctions against 10 organizations and six businessmen engaged in commerce with North Korea.

All of them are based in China, Russia or Singapore. They also have business dealings in the United States.

“I applaud this step by the administration to impose long-overdue sanctions on these Russian and Chinese entities,” said Gardner. “However, we need to do more – much more – in imposing penalties on all North Korean enablers, no matter where they are based. We must give every entity doing business with Pyongyang a choice – you either do business with this outlaw regime or the world’s economic superpower.”

Some of the businesses purchase billions of dollars in coal from North Korea. Others launder money gained through suspicious activities through the country, Gardner said.

Gardner is chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific and International Cybersecurity. He recently introduced a bill to ban organizations that do business with North Korea or their affiliates from participating in trade with the U.S. financial system.

“When North Korea receives money from foreign businesses, they don’t turn around and give it to their starving people,” Gardner said. “Kim Jong-un puts it into his nuclear and ballistic missile programs. One of the most effective ways in stopping these weapons advancements is to choke off their financial support across the world.”

The Chinese companies sanctioned include Mingzheng International Trading Limited, which the Treasury Department called a “front company” for North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank.

“It is unacceptable for individuals and companies in China, Russia and elsewhere to enable North Korea to generate income used to develop weapons of mass destruction and destabilize the region,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

The Treasury Department announced the new sanctions while North Korean and U.S. diplomats exchanged harsh words during a United Nations forum in Geneva, Switzerland, this week.

North Korean negotiators said they “never” would consider halting their development of nuclear missiles.

The United Nations Security Council and China have tried unsuccessfully to convince North Korea to drop its nuclear weapons program. China is North Korea’s closest ally and trading partner.

The North Koreans say their nuclear missile program is justified by ongoing threats from the United States, such as the joint military exercises this week with South Korea.

Ambassador Robert Wood said the U.S. government was ready to use “the full range of capabilities” to protect the United States and its allies from North Korea’s “growing threat.”

Any U.S. defense against North Korean missiles would have some connection with Schriever Air Force Base outside Colorado Springs, which is home to the Missile Defense Integration and Operations Center Test Facility. The facility is a research center responsible for analyzing and deploying systems used by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

Lamborn warned in his op-ed that the Missile Defense Agency is underfunded to match the rising North Korean threats.

The agency’s funding has dropped from $11 billion a year to $8.4 billion in the past decade, Lamborn said. As a result, the quality of the anti-missile systems and the research and development for them has suffered.

“This trend must stop if we are going to take missile defense seriously,” Lamborn wrote.

He said funding for the Missile Defense Agency should be no less than $10 billion a year.

He wants some of the money to be spent on additional space-based missile defense, directed energy weapons that focus high-energy beams on targets and the updated Long Range Discrimination Radar in Alaska to track incoming missiles.

“Should diplomacy fail and Jong-un makes an ill-fated attempt to attack the United States or our allies, we must stand ready to provide an effective defense system,” Lamborn wrote.

A milder attitude toward North Korea was expressed by Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Denver) in an Aug. 9 Twitter message. She wrote that President Donald Trump’s “reckless rhetoric on North Korea could further escalate a very precarious situation. Thoughtful strategy and diplomacy is critical.”