July 29, 2025 03:08 PM UTC

Americans For Potholes Just Makes Stuff Up

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• by: Colorado Pols

Colorado’s leading high-budget Republican astroturf group, the Koch-funded Americans For Prosperity, is running an outreach campaign following the passage of President Donald Trump’s “We’re All Going To Die Act” budget bill–not trying to win over public opinion on this historically unpopular piece of legislation, but demanding that the Colorado legislature not convene a special session to start dealing with the impacts to Colorado’s state budget:

When we clicked through to visit AFP Colorado’s page to contact one’s state lawmakers in opposition to a special session, we were momentarily taken aback, assuming we had been directed to the wrong place. Because what they are asking their members to demand from legislators has no relationship to what’s actually happening in Colorado:

Letter to Legislator
Dear (Lawmaker Name)

I’m writing to ask you to stop playing games with Colorado families’ hard-earned money.
While families across the state are tightening their belts, some lawmakers are proposing a wasteful taxpayer-funded special session to raise taxes. [Pols emphasis]

My message is simple. Stop wasting our money.

NO SPECIAL SESSION. NO NEW TAXES. NO MORE GAMES.

Unless this is your first day learning about Colorado politics, you (hopefully) already know that lawmakers do not have the power to raise or impose “new taxes” due to the restrictions imposed by the 1992 so-called Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, that requires among numerous other restrictions that voters vote on all tax increases. Speaking last week with 9NEWS’ Marshall Zelinger, Gov. Jared Polis repeated the obvious, that any special session would be pricipally focused on cuts forced by the federal budget bill:

Polis indicated any special session would need to occur before Oct. 1, when the federal budget year begins. He emphasized that such a session would focus on budget cuts rather than new spending, primarily due to what he described as holes created by federal changes to healthcare programs and tax policy.

“A special session, if there is one, is about cuts, not new expenditures,” Polis said, citing reductions to Medicaid coverage and rural hospital support as primary concerns. [Pols emphasis]

We’re not sure exactly what AFP’s objective is here, whether to downplay the damage being done by the federal budget cuts, to obstruct the state’s attempts to reduce the pain, or both. The special session is still not reportedly 100% certain, and if lawmakers decide against it for whatever reason AFP is certain to claim some kind of victory. But either way, their message about the special session to members could not be more dishonest, and every lawmaker who receives this cut-and-paste demand to not “raise taxes” knows the sender of that message is being lied to.

And that can’t be good for AFP Colorado’s influence at the Capitol in the long run.