August 15, 2025 01:08 PM UTC

Media Ain't Buying What Republicans are Selling on Special Legislative Session

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

Lawmakers will reconvene next Thursday for a special legislative session in order to figure out how to make another $800 million dollars in cuts to the state budget necessitated by President Trump’s “big beautiful bullshit bill” enacted by Congress in early July. In the meantime, Colorado Republicans have been trying very hard to put their own spin on the special session…but media outlets across the state aren’t buying the GOP’s tortured rhetoric.

Despite absurd claims to the contrary, journalists in Colorado are well aware that Trump’s BBBB will make significant cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits that will increase health insurance costs for all Coloradans and decimate rural hospitals; will adversely harm lower-income families in order to give tax breaks to the wealthy; and will force states to make impossible choices in order to make up for lost federal revenue. Colorado Republicans have been persistent in claiming that the state’s new budget hole is somehow the fault of Colorado Democrats because of years of overspending and that Trump’s big bill is really great!

Brian Eason and Jesse Paul of The Colorado Sun have been consistently reporting the reality of Colorado’s budget situation since Trump signed his stupid bill into law on July 4. This week, Eason and Paul sketched out a comprehensive Q&A on why lawmakers are returning for another special legislative session:

When Republicans in Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and it was signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4, the measure rewrote the federal tax code to extend and expand income tax breaks for companies and individuals.

Because of how Colorado’s state tax code is linked to the federal tax code, the bill immediately reduced the state’s income tax collections by an estimated $1.2 billion for the current fiscal year, which began July 1…

…Combined with the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which forbids the state legislature from raising taxes without voter permission, Colorado is now facing a big gap in how much it planned to spend this year and how much tax revenue will have to pay its bills. [Pols emphasis]

The Aurora Sentinel has likewise been unmoved by Republican messaging:

Simply put: whenever Congress changes federal taxable income, Colorado’s tax base changes immediately and automatically. And because the Big Beautiful Bill significantly shrinks that taxable income, Colorado’s revenue projections have been gutted.

The governor’s office estimates the measure will reduce corporate income tax revenue by as much as $950 million and individual income tax revenue by as much as $460 million, for a total loss of roughly $1.2 billion, Polis and state budget officials told the Sentinel.

Ditto for Marshall Zelinger of 9News:

The fiscal crisis stems from federal tax policy changes passed by the Republican-led Congress and signed by President Trump in July, which reduced revenue flowing to the state after lawmakers in April had already approved a balanced budget that started in July.

And here’s what The Sun says about Republican attempts to blame Democrats for the budget hole:

Republicans have been highlighting how much Colorado’s budget has increased in recent years as a way to blame the Democratic majority at the Capitol for the deficit that was in fact caused by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“Democrats’ reckless overspending is why there’s a budget shortfall and now a special session,” U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, a Fort Lupton Republican who voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, posted on social media.

The claim doesn’t add up. [Pols emphasis]

First, it wasn’t Democrats in the state legislature who passed the Republican federal tax and spending bill, causing a drop in state tax collections and punching a hole in the state budget.

Secondly, the main factor that has historically determined the growth of Colorado’s state budget isn’t who controls the state legislature. It’s TABOR.

To the extent that there has been budget mismanagement in recent years, it’s actually Republicans who are at fault. As The Colorado Sun notes in today’s “Unaffiliated” newsletter, Colorado is in a difficult place now in part because of Republican-led ballot measures promoting income tax reductions that the state really can’t afford:

Due to sweeping federal tax cuts signed into law last month by President Donald Trump, Colorado expects to find itself below the TABOR cap for the first time since 2020. That has left lawmakers searching for as much as $800 million in spending cuts or new revenue to close a budget hole created just days into the new fiscal year.

It’s not the first time that statewide income tax cuts passed at a time of TABOR surpluses exacerbated a fiscal crunch shortly thereafter.

With large surpluses to work with in 1999 and 2000, Colorado lawmakers passed two rounds of income tax cuts, slashing the rate from 5% to 4.63%, which is where it stayed until 2020’s Proposition 116.

In the intervening years, TABOR surpluses were rare. Instead, Colorado faced repeated budget crises brought on by two recessions, leading to deep cuts to higher education and the eventual creation of a decade-long K-12 school funding shortfall, known as the budget stabilization factor.

If history repeats itself, we can’t say we weren’t warned.

It’s impossible to find an example of the GOP’s special session message actually landing somewhere outside of right-wing talk radio and online echo chambers. Even official social media accounts like that of the Senate Republicans appear to be backing off their own bullshit [see image at left].

Perhaps Republicans are starting to realize that their narrative has been about as successful as the Colorado Rockies and that they should pivot away from entering next week’s special session relying on a “nuh-uh” retort. For all their big talk about “fiscal discipline,” Republican lawmakers would look even more ridiculous if they declined to support proposed budget cuts next week.

Regardless of what Republican messaging masterminds come up with next, it’s important to give kudos to Colorado political reporters for refusing to parrot GOP claims that have no basis in reality. Just because Republicans have decided to blindly parrot whatever nonsense comes out of President Trump’s mouth doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to do the same.

The truth isn’t completely dead after all.