Complete Colorado argues that Colorado should look to Florida for a lesson in fiscal restraint, contrasting Colorado’s newly signed $46.8 billion budget with Florida’s $114.5 billion budget that the article says represents a second consecutive year of reduced spending. The piece notes Colorado’s budget grew almost 7% over last year, even as lawmakers continue warning about budget challenges and looking for more revenue.
That is the governing contrast in one clean picture. Colorado Democrats see a budget problem and immediately start patting down taxpayers for loose change. Florida sees a budget and asks whether government might try eating one salad this year. Florida is not magic. It has problems too. But it does prove spending restraint is not a mythical creature hiding in a TABOR footnote.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Colorado’s budget rose to $46.8 billion, up from $43.9 billion, while lawmakers still talk like the state is living under a bridge eating cold beans. Taxpayers are tired of hearing “shortfall” from people holding a bigger checkbook every year.
- Complete Colorado says that amounts to about $7,800 per Coloradan, compared with about $4,850 per Floridian under Florida’s larger total budget. Population math is annoying that way. It keeps ruining the press conference.
- The article argues Florida reduced spending despite having a surplus, while Colorado keeps looking for ways around taxpayer protections and toward higher taxes. That is the difference between discipline and appetite.
- Colorado lawmakers keep blaming outside forces and “crisis” conditions, but the article points to policy choices like Medicaid expansion, universal school meal subsidies, tax breaks, and COVID-era spending decisions. The Capitol loves pretending the bill fell from the sky, wearing a tiny parachute.
- The piece warns about Proposition NN and Initiative 195 as examples of Colorado pushing toward more revenue while talking about fiscal stress. In Colorado, “temporary crisis” has a funny habit of becoming permanent government growth with better branding.
My Bottom Line
Colorado’s problem is not that citizens are undertaxed. It is that the Capitol treats every dollar like it was born inside the building.
That is the core disease. Government grows. Then government complains it cannot afford the government it just grew. Then the same people who expanded the menu hand taxpayers the check and call it courage.
Florida is not paradise, and we do not need to turn every policy discussion into sunshine-state fan fiction. But the comparison is useful because it strips away the excuse-making. Another large, fast-growing state can make different choices. It can restrain spending. It can keep taxes more competitive. It can treat a surplus as a reason to lighten the load, not as proof government has been starving heroically.
Colorado needs fiscal discipline, not another round of fee hikes, tax grabs, regulatory drag, and “we had no choice” theater. Taxpayers know the truth. The state is not broke. The appetite is just out of control.
Source: Complete Colorado
