Colorado Budget Strain Exposes the Cost of Overspending

The Denver Gazette’s Marianne Goodland lays out the budget knife fight now underway under the Gold Dome, where lawmakers opened debate on a $46.8 billion state budget that is already wobbling before the ink is dry. Rising Medicaid costs, no money set aside for new legislation, and a parade of bills still demanding funding have turned this year’s balancing act into something between a spreadsheet crisis and a self-inflicted hostage situation.

Goodland reports that the main budget bill arrived with 64 “orbital” bills attached, all meant to make the math work. That alone tells you plenty. When your budget needs a solar system of side bills just to stay upright, maybe the problem is not bad luck. Maybe the problem is a legislature that spends like a teenager with dad’s credit card and then acts stunned when the bill shows up.

The article also highlights the core tension Democrats now have to own. Even Sen. Judy Amabile acknowledged that last year they relied on one-time money to patch things together, while this year they are being forced to make cuts people can actually feel. That is the part no one gets to hide from. For years, spending was the party. Now the tab hit the table, and suddenly everybody is looking at TABOR like it is the only sober adult in the room.

The Bullet Point Brief

• Colorado House Democrats opened debate on a $46.8 billion budget that is already showing strain thanks to rising Medicaid costs and a pile of bills still hunting for money. Nothing says fiscal discipline quite like passing bills first and wondering who pays later.
• The budget comes with 64 “orbital” bills meant to help keep the plan balanced. If your budget needs that many helper bills, it is not a budget. It is a Rube Goldberg machine built out of taxpayer dollars.
• One proposed cut, ending Medicaid reimbursement for equine therapy, was rejected in committee, blowing a projected $181,000 savings hole right back into the math. Apparently even in a budget crunch, the state still struggles to distinguish between essential services and boutique government indulgence.
• Lawmakers have no traditional set-aside this year for new legislation, even though dozens of House and Senate bills still carry costs. Amazing stuff. They are out of money, but the legislative vending machine keeps spitting out new spending ideas.
• Amabile admitted that last year’s budget leaned on one-time funds, while this year requires real cuts. That is the clearest sentence in the whole story. The can has been kicked, the road has ended, and now Democrats have to explain why overspending somehow led to less money. Real mystery there.

My Bottom Line

I will confess something deeply uncharitable: there is a certain grim satisfaction in watching the people who created the mess now scramble to mop it up with talking points and procedural duct tape. For years, Democrats under the Gold Dome treated spending restraint like some embarrassing old superstition from the provinces. Government was always going to be bigger, smarter, kinder, and naturally more expensive. Well, here we are.

This is what happens when lawmakers convince themselves that every new cause, program, pilot project, subsidy, bureaucracy, and progressive vanity exercise simply must be funded. They keep proposing bills that cost money because spending has become a reflex, not a choice. It is political muscle memory. See problem, create program. See headline, write bill. See taxpayer, reach for wallet.

And thank God for TABOR, because without it, this bunch would spend Colorado into a fiscal crater and then hold a press conference to brag about the impact statement. TABOR is not the problem. TABOR is the guardrail keeping ideological hobbyists from driving the whole state budget off a mountain road while insisting the real issue is the seatbelt. When government cannot print money, it eventually has to confront reality. That is what this fight is: reality, arriving uninvited.

The broader insult here is that none of this was unforeseeable. They knew costs were rising. They knew one-time gimmicks do not last. They knew Medicaid spending was ballooning. They knew the wish list was bigger than the wallet. And still they kept filing bills like Monopoly money was legal tender. Now they want applause for wrestling with the consequences of their own decisions. No. Cut spending. Stop pretending every legislative brainstorm deserves funding. And maybe, just maybe, rediscover the radical notion that a balanced budget is not oppression. It is basic adulthood. fileciteturn1file0

Source: Denver Gazette