September 24, 2025 04:31 PM UTC

"Both Ways Barb" Kirkmeyer Earns Her Nickname Again

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

State Senator Barb Kirkmeyer (R-Brighton), now a Republican candidate for Governor in 2026, has been dubbed “Both Ways Barb” for her tendency to offer conflicting opinions on a variety of subjects.

Kirkmeyer showed again recently how a selective memory of her own political and policy positions continues to get her in trouble. In a recent Q&A with Ernest Luning of the Gazette newspaper’s political website, Kirkmeyer claimed ignorance of the details of HR-1 — otherwise known as President Trump’s big beautiful bullshit bill — which forced Gov. Jared Polis to call a special legislative session in August in order to patch an $800 million hole in Colorado’s budget

LUNING: Speaking of the relationship between federal funds and the state budget, would you have voted for the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill, HR-1, as it was presented in Congress back at the end of June?

KIRKMEYER: You know, I did not have the opportunity to review that full bill. I don’t know everything that’s in that bill. [Pols emphasis]

LUNING: It was a very large bill, there was a lot in there.

KIRKMEYER: Wasn’t it like a 1,000-page bill? I mean, I’m not in the habit of voting for budget bills without knowing what’s in them, just so you know. [Pols emphasis] But the tax relief that was in that bill, absolutely, I would have been voting for. The holding states accountable with regard to how they administer entitlement programs? Yes, absolutely, states needs to be held accountable there. But I just want to be clear, on HR-1, it was really, to me, more about tax cuts. The Democrats had a huge issue with this, but they cut taxes at the federal level, which, in turn, because of our rolling conformity here at the state, cut taxes at the state (level). $1.2 billion.

Kirkmeyer says that she does not know the details of HR-1, which is a weird comment to make given her public statements throughout August. For example, here she is on the Senate floor during Day 2 of the special legislative session in August [all emphasis is ours]:

KIRKMEYER: So again, I mean, this is kind of the information that keeps coming out that we keep hearing here from the Capitol that HR-1 is cutting benefits and HR-1 is doing all of these things, both in SNAP [food stamp benefits] and in Medicaid. So I will just say this, first of all, with the Medicaid eligibility determinations, those have not been changed. Those were not changed in HR-1. So, the amount of dollars — the 138% of the federal poverty level for people to be on Medicaid — has not changed, and neither has that changed for SNAP. So the dollar amounts for the actual benefits, I don’t believe has been cut. I don’t know of anyone that has actually been kicked off of anything…

…I keep hearing that those things have changed. Similar to like what you what folks here keep saying about Medicaid that we’re going to kick off hundreds of thousands of people. No one’s getting kicked off. 

Just a few weeks ago, Kirkmeyer sure seemed to know a lot about HR-1 — the big beautiful bullshit bill that she now claims she hasn’t reviewed.

KIRKMEYER: Six million dollars cut from education funding, not from benefits for SNAP recipients. Fifty million dollars cut from implementation fees, not from benefits for SNAP recipients. So the statement that was made to begin with that said,  that HR-1 cut funding to SNAP recipients was incorrect. Benefits are still the same.

It might have made sense for Kirkmeyer to have pretended to be ignorant about HR-1 from the jump, since everything she said above is actually wrong; funding for Medicaid and SNAP was absolutely slashed in HR-1, but those cuts don’t go into full effect until 2027 because Congressional Republicans wanted to delay the pain for voters until after the 2026 election. Colorado Republicans (including Kirkmeyer) tried hard to spin the state’s $800 million budget hole as a local spending problem, rather than a result of HR-1, but the media wasn’t buying what they were selling. Kirkmeyer can’t now pretend that the big beautiful bullshit bill is some big mystery.

Kirkmeyer’s gubernatorial campaign has been endorsed by former Congressman and two-time gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez, who was the original “Both Ways” Republican back in 2006. Reporters and voters didn’t believe “Both Ways Bob” 20 years ago, and they’re not going to believe “Both Ways Barb” in 2026.

Now, as ever, it seems that Colorado Republicans have learned nothing from the history of Colorado Republicans.