August 11, 2025 04:06 PM UTC

Local GOP Excuses For National GOP Budget-Buster Bill Get Very Stupid

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

As state lawmakers prepare to reconvene for a special session later this month to address the budget shortfall created by the federal reconciliation budget bill that every Republican member of Congress from Colorado voted for and President Donald Trump signed into law, Colorado Republicans are fighting an uphill battle to shift the blame for the impending local cuts away from the Republicans in Washington who voted to slash the funding to begin with and on to Democrats now tasked with the hard choices necessary to make do with less in the face of ever-growing demand. We discussed previously the feeble excuses from ranking Republican member of the Joint Budget Committee “Both Ways Barb” Kirkmeyer, who helped craft the state budget lawmakers must now revise to compensate for cuts made by Kirkmeyer’s colleagues in D.C.–but cannot bring herself to criticize Washington Republicans’ and the Trump administration’s actions for fear of losing support in her all-but-announced run for governor.

As the Pueblo Chieftain’s James Bartolo reports, Democrats and Republicans representing southern Colorado are engaging in a similar reality vs. wilfully ignorant fantasy debate, over state budget cuts for whom responsibility is objectively not in question:

Sen. Nick Hinrichsen, a Pueblo resident representing all of Pueblo County, made his own X post stating that while he was “heartbroken” legislators will be in session during key events at the Colorado State Fair, it is a “tragic coincidence” that residents living near the fairgrounds will be “disproportionately” hit the hardest by funding cuts.

“What we do or don’t do in special session will have impacts that will affect how many of those neighbors do or don’t die early due to loss of coverage/available care,” Hinrichsen posted. “We have a duty to protect as many people as possible, not ignore them as we walk past on our way to the party.”

But GOP Rep. Ty Winter from neighboring Las Animas County, as he whined last week when the session was announced, would rather be at the party:

Winter told the Chieftian that his concerns about the special session had nothing to do with the session itself and “everything to do” with the timing. He spoke about the possibility of missing the Aug. 22 Legislative BBQ at the State Fair, saying the BBQ is a valuable event where legislators can speak to constituents they are typically unable to meet with…

To Rep. Winter’s credit, he does in this newer story appear to acknowledge the need for the special session in the abstract, which is more than can be said for many of his Republican colleagues in the legislature and conservative advocacy groups like Americans for Potholes Prosperity. Unfortunately, Rep. Winter is no more willing than Sen. Kirkmeyer to place the blame where the voting public overwhelmingly knows to–and as a result is forced to make excuses that do not pass factual muster:

He said that a budget crisis has been created by Colorado Democrats, who are scapegoating the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“We’ve seen over $500 million in the last couple of years go to people that are non-citizens of this country, between healthcare, education and attorney fees,” Winter said. “There’s so many things that can be done… you’ll hear me say it over and over and over again, we don’t have a revenue problem in this state, we have a priority problem.”

In an attempt to sidestep a fact-based debate, Rep. Winter is jamming several separate issues into one questionably large number that he then falsely suggests the state has control over. The reality is that Colorado has a federal constitutional obligation to educate every child present in the state, and that’s not something state lawmakers can change. It is also the law that hospitals must provide medical care to anyone who shows up at the emergency room, and the alternative of people dying at the entrances is not something Rep. Winter or any other conscientious person should support. There is a program in Colorado that extended health coverage to some undocumented residents, but the total cost of that has been a tiny fraction of the figure Winter quotes above. The same is true for anyone accused of a crime who can’t afford a lawyer–you don’t want to live in a country where that doesn’t happen, and Colorado lawmakers couldn’t change the Sixth Amendment even if they wanted to.

No one should envy the hard decisions that our state lawmakers must make in order to minimize the harm at the individual level from the cuts prescribed by the federal budget bill. But it doesn’t serve any useful purpose to lie about the cause, or to propose solutions that either do not address the real problem or that state lawmakers have no power to enact.

They’re wasting everyone’s precious time, and protesting their own party’s guilt.