Colorado’s $46.8 Billion Budget Still Cuts Everything

Colorado’s budget writers have finally produced the perfect symbol of modern state government: a bigger budget that still cuts everything.

Colorado Politics reports lawmakers are pushing a $46.8 billion budget for 2026-27, up from the prior year’s $43.9 billion, with the biggest driver being Medicaid, which alone needs another $1.5 billion. General fund spending rises to $17.3 billion. And yet even with all that money sloshing around, the Joint Budget Committee is hacking away at services, trimming programs, squeezing colleges, cutting grants, reducing reserves, and generally walking around the Capitol with the expression of people who just found out the credit card was not, in fact, magic.

• Lawmakers are pushing a $46.8 billion budget for 2026-27.
• The prior year budget was $43.9 billion.
• Medicaid alone needs another $1.5 billion.
• General fund spending rises to $17.3 billion.
• The rainy-day reserve drops from 15% to 13%.

That is the story. Not the spreadsheets. Not the sanctimony. The story is that Colorado’s political class built a government that expands on autopilot, then acts wounded and philosophical when the bill shows up.

Medicaid is the beast in the basement here. The article says the program has been driving overspending in both the current and upcoming fiscal years through higher caseloads and overuse of services. The department that runs it faces allegations of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement, with Congress investigating the fraud claims and agency chief Kim Bimestefer resigning last week under a cloud. So naturally, the response is the most Colorado thing imaginable: keep the giant machine running, admit it is malfunctioning, and then cut dental benefits, disability services, and child-centered programs elsewhere to feed it.

And because this state cannot mismanage just one thing at a time, corrections also wants more money for 941 additional beds, while universal preschool blew past its budget, higher education gets clipped again, tuition rises, agriculture gets shaved, and the rainy-day reserve gets raided down from 15% to 13%. Everybody gets to “deal with less,” as the Democrats put it, inside a budget that is somehow still larger. That is not discipline. That is a government eating itself in nicer language.

Then we get the usual moral garnish. We are told the cuts are “compassionate” and “evidence-based.” Sure. Nothing says compassionate governance like promising programs, bungling the math, and then informing everyone that services, aid, and pay raises must shrink because the leviathan had another appetite event.

The sharpest little grenade buried in the piece is Cover All Coloradans. Lawmakers are capping the program for children and pregnant women here illegally after costs that were once estimated around $26 million threatened to blow past $127 million next year. There is your Capitol in miniature: launch first, posture second, panic third, cap later.

So here we are. A $46.8 billion budget, more spending, fewer promises kept, and a ruling class asking us to admire its painful wisdom. Colorado government has become a guy buying bottle service with rent money, then calling the family meeting to explain why everyone needs to cut back on essentials.

Source: Colorado Politics