April 21, 2026 03:47 PM UTC

For Barb Kirkmeyer, Gloom And Doom Is The Point

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• by: Colorado Pols

Veteran political reporter Shaun Boyd of CBS4 Denver has a well-earned reputation as the go-to correspondent for Republican friendly news coverage, sometimes at the expense of her own credibility. But when it comes to imparting something close to a positive spin for Republican gubernatorial candidate and Joint Budget Committee member “Both Ways Barb” Kirkmeyer after this year’s historically ugly budget cycle in which painful cuts were dealt to vital programs and services across the board, not even Shaun Boyd could bridge the mile-wide contradictions:

Virtually every facet of state government took a hit in this year’s budget. Cuts included $3 million for teacher recruitment, $5 million for behavioral health programs, $6 million for clean energy tax credits, $9 million for early childhood intervention, $10 million for multi-modal projects, $18 million for adoption and kinship care, and $130 million for affordable housing…

State Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, who sits on the Budget Committee, says providers are already receiving about 70 cents on the dollar. She worries some clinics and rural hospitals will close.

“It’s not just people on Medicaid or even Medicaire. It is everyone loses access to health care. When you have a county that has no maternal health care available, it is every woman in that county that just lost access to maternal health care,” said Kirkmeyer.

That’s a statement that could have just as easily come from a Democrat, and it’s absolutely correct as experts have been warning for over a year–sweeping cuts to Medicaid and Medicare endanger health care for more than just beneficiaries of those programs. If a rural hospital goes under due to Medicaid cuts all of the insured patients who depend on that hospital suffer just as much. As we discussed last week, hospitals across the state with a higher percentage of Medicaid patients are at risk of this very fate.

But here’s the difference: Democrats don’t want these cuts. But Barb Kirkmeyer, despite the pain she acknowledges they inflict, wants even more:

“It’s time to learn to live within our means, stop thinking the only way through this is overtaxing people, but to live within our means and make cuts in spending. Ongoing cuts in spending. [Pols emphasis] We can do that but we’re going to have to have everyone’s help do that,” said Kirkmeyer.

If you’re looking for a segue from the Barb Kirkmeyer who is troubled by Medicaid cuts to the Barb Kirkmeyer clamoring for more Medicaid cuts, there isn’t one. In one paragraph, Kirkmeyer decries the effects of Medicaid cuts, and then a few paragraphs down, she promises more cuts and absurdly asks for “everyone’s help to do that” as if majority Democrats are happy about these cuts. At no point does Kirkmeyer admit the role of the federal budget bill that blew the original billion-dollar hole in Colorado’s budget setting this vicious cycle of budget cuts in motion, since laying blame on Donald Trump and Washington, D.C. Republicans would be seized upon by her Republican primary opponents.

Instead, we get this jarring below-the-fold bait and switch. Cutting Medicaid is the worst. And as governor I promise…to cut Medicaid more!

We don’t know who that’s supposed to inspire, but it’s not any voters we know.