Colorado Public Radio, in a piece by Rae Solomon, does what the dutiful press so often does when budget cuts arrive: it puts a human face on government spending reductions and invites readers to feel the pain. The article centers on the Joint Budget Committee’s struggle to close a $1.5 billion shortfall and highlights the emotional language lawmakers use as they describe the budget process as difficult, painful, and deeply personal.
Solomon focuses on two examples to make that case. One is a high school senior who planned to use the Teacher Recruitment Education and Preparation program to help pay for a teaching degree, only to find the funding suddenly cut. The other is a single mother caring full-time for three medically complex teenagers who says Medicaid-related reductions could wipe out much of her income and destabilize her family. CPR’s frame is clear: these are not just line items, they are lives.
And yes, that is true as far as it goes. Budgets affect real people. But the article also quietly includes the sentence that matters most: “we overcommitted.” That is the part the emotional framing never really wants to dwell on, because once you start asking how government grew this large, this sprawling, and this central to daily life, the whole narrative gets a lot less misty-eyed and a lot more uncomfortable.
The Bullet Point Brief
- CPR says Colorado’s budget cuts will have a human toll, and then proceeds to do exactly what public radio does best: hand you the sad story before asking why the machine got this big in the first place.
- The article spotlights cuts to the TREP teacher-prep program and Medicaid-related supports for caregivers and people with disabilities. Real consequences, absolutely. Also real evidence that government has inserted itself deep into more and more corners of life.
- Lawmakers describe the process in emotional terms, with references to sleepless nights, tears, and agonizing tradeoffs. Weird how the tears always show up during the trimming stage, not during the years of expansion.
- One Democratic lawmaker quoted by CPR says, “we overcommitted.” There it is. The quiet part, briefly visible before the story hustles back to the sympathy montage.
- CPR never really asks the core question: how did Colorado become so reliant on government programs that every spending reduction now gets treated like society itself is collapsing?
My Bottom Line
No one ever talks about this, so I will. As the members of the “powerful Joint Budget Committee” wring their hands and gnash their teeth over cutting a billion dollars, almost nobody in the press asks the obvious question: how did we get so reliant on government to begin with?
That is the scandal underneath the sob stories. The dutiful media step in and show us the “human side” of budget cuts, usually with soft-focus examples involving children, caregivers, or somebody whose life was built around a government promise. Fine. Those stories are real. But the press almost never turns the camera around and asks why government got so bloated, so sprawling, and so presumptuous that every reduction now gets framed as cruelty. They never ask that. Never.
And the reason matters. We allowed the bloat. We tolerated the grift. We applauded the expansion. We let government keep taking over responsibilities that used to belong to families, churches, civic groups, neighborhoods, and actual communities. When those institutions stop doing what they ought to do, government does what government always does. It expands, hires, brands, promises, and entrenches. Then one day the bill comes due and everyone acts shocked that dependency has consequences.
So yes, cut it. Cut it and start remembering what community is supposed to mean. Parents should raise their kids. Neighbors should help neighbors. Churches and local organizations should step back into the vacuum they helped leave behind. The Great Suburban Normie might even have to look up from youth sports long enough to volunteer again. Government is not a substitute for civil society. It is what fills the hole when civil society goes lazy. And once it fills that hole, it never leaves voluntarily.
Source: Colorado Public Radio
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