The Denver Gazette’s budget story is basically this: Colorado Democrats spent like the party would never end, and now they are wandering around the Capitol looking under couch cushions for billions while pretending the hangover was caused by someone else.
The headline number is $46.8 billion, but the better number is the panic underneath it. Rising Medicaid costs. No set-aside for new legislation. Dozens of bills still asking for money. Sixty-four “orbital” bills needed to keep the thing balanced. That is not a disciplined budget. That is a legislative Jenga tower built by people who think every moral impulse deserves a fiscal note and every fiscal note is somebody else’s problem.
And here is the part that would be funny if we were not paying for it: they still keep proposing more stuff. They do not have the money. They know they do not have the money. The budget is already wheezing. Yet under the Gold Dome, the instinct is always the same. More programs. More promises. More “investments.” More heroic announcements from lawmakers who treat arithmetic like a right-wing conspiracy. It is the political equivalent of setting your kitchen on fire and then applying for a second air fryer.
The Gazette piece shows the strain in plain English. They cannot find $181,000 in savings after a small Medicaid cut dies. There is no normal legislative set-aside this year. Around 100-plus bills still carry price tags. Medicaid keeps chewing through cash. SNAP errors are high enough that future federal penalties are looming. And lawmakers are openly talking about private prison beds, prison-population gimmicks, and one-time money because they have run out of elegant lies.
Naturally, Democrats are blaming Congress, federal changes, the weather, vibes, probably mercury in retrograde. But this mess has a home address, and it is the state Capitol. Years of overspending, program creep, benefit expansion, gimmick balancing, and performative governance have consequences. Eventually even a deep-blue legislature has to face the rude, bigoted reality that numbers are real.
This is why TABOR remains the brick wall these people hate most. Without it, this crowd would already be vacuuming your wallet with both hands while calling it compassion. TABOR does not create the stupidity. It just limits how much of your money the stupidity can incinerate at once.
So yes, there is a certain sick pleasure in watching the same people who spent recklessly now act shocked that budgets require cutting. Welcome to the part after the campaign slogans, where math shows up with a tire iron.
Source: Denver Gazette
Just Stop It
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