07-31-25 Interview - CO Rep. Barb Kirkmeyer. Joins The Show

Big article today in Colorado Politics dot Com.

The headline let me just read it to you.

Colorado budget faces one billion dollars shortfall. Atalys say it's due to federal tax overhaul. Joining me now with perhaps a different perspective, is Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer. She's been a part of the Joint Budget Committee for the past few years and has been sounding the alarm about the spending that has been codified over the last few years by Democrats who have taken one time dollars from arpun created ongoing programs with them, and now I feel like the

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Okay, we're gonna start off with something that happened at the end of Ross Kiminski show, because I came in, as I do at the end of every Ross Kiminski show, and he was talking to the governor and Ross asked a question, did you just grab the Governor's answer?

Zach, is that what you grabbed?

Wait?

Wait, hang on, I just want to say up the question if you just grabbed the answer?

So Ross asked him.

He said, look, you know, your party is not really known for cutting spending, So how do you plan to wrangle your party into line to cut the kind of spending that we need to cut Because we're in the whole of billion dollars and this is what the governor had to say.

You're going to see really funny politics for us. You're going to see Republicans advocating for more spending and less cuts and bigger government. I mean, you're you know, yeah, you're absolutely right. Democrats of the responsibility governing, they're gonna

Senator Kirkmeyer, I know you're probably shocked to find out that the Republicans in Colorado are the party of big spending and big government. What are your thoughts on that?

I think that is funny. He's funny. He's a funny guy. As sevest one liner.

I've heard all day today, and it came from the governor that we're not going to want to cut.

Seriously, it has not been the issue.

With the minority party. I mean, he's one party in the one party control party. They have control of every you know, the House, the Senate, and the Governor's office.

Why haven't they fixed the budget?

I mean in this last year when I kept saying everybody needs to cut ten percent.

Every department should cut ten percent. We didn't get there.

And a year when inflation was two point four percent, we increased our general fund operating budget.

By three point six percent. So an a year.

After I lectured them on the state floor day after day after day, I mean they got tired of hearing me, we still increased our general fund operating budget, which is what needs to be cut over inflation. So and that would be on the Dems. That would be on them. So we'll see. But if the governor's coming in thinking he's going to cut K through twelve education.

He needs to think again. This guy needs to.

Actually define what the priorities are and what they should be. And in my book, that's K through twelve education, that's Medicaid provider rates, it's neglected and abuse kids, and you know, I mean the list kind of goes on from there. But those are the top three that we should be funding. Those are the top three things that this governor and his budget request last year thought it was a good idea to try and cut and keep a hold of all these other projects that we just don't even need.

I bet he can't even list all the projects, but anyways, and new programs that he started. But I would like to he is going to have to cut.

Well, I'd like to ask what you just listed off three priorities. What do you think the governor's priorities are that he's demonstrated in his budget requests that are different than education, Medicaid providers, and connected neglected and abuse kids.

Sure, I'll tell you what his priorities were in the budget request back in November first of twenty twenty four.

He wanted to fund that big, ugly bridge. You want to.

Fund a new take a book down at the state Fair because you know it's O one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. He wanted to cut rural health care, so that wasn't a priority. He wanted to cut funding for neglected and abuse kids, so obviously that's.

Not a priority.

He came in cutting Medicaid provider rates, not a priority for him. And he wanted to cut K through twelve education by one hundred and.

Fifty million bucks. Again not a priority.

So I'm thinking all that other stuff that we don't really need are his priorities and what I think are core critical components of government. A person who does know how to govern talking here is what we should be funding. So if he's going to call me a big spender because I fund those things that are utmost important.

To the people in the state of color you know, like public safety, education, healthcare, then go ahead, call me a big spender.

He's right, we're not going to cut those, but we can cut all those other things like that Office of just Transition that needs.

To go the all the new employees.

You know, over the course of the last six seven years, we have increased employees state employees in the state by about one thousand employees year over year. Now, granted some of those are within the Department of Higher Education, but he's still signed off on it.

When he signed that budget. We are, I mean, we're.

Close to seventy thousand new employees, our seventy thousand employees in the state of Colorado.

With at least seven thousand of them being new employees. So he's the.

One who's not going to want to cut Why didn't he do a hiring friese you know it? And he doesn't have to wait for the legislature. By the way, while we have to budget to current law, he doesn't have.

To spend a current law, he could cut spending.

Now, he can do what Bill Owens did and tell all of his department heads, you're going to have to cut ten percent this year, so start cutting now and let me know where it's at kind of thing.

But he hasn't done that.

In fact, yesterday in front of the legislative committee that I wasn't actually invited to be at, but I went in too. Anyways, Farandino, the governor's budget guy, Director Farandino, said he's telling people they need to cut two point five percent. How the heck does he think that's going to get get us to a balanced budget. I mean, that's not even close, just not even close. So we'll see what they come up with. I'd like to see

So let's talk about medicaid for a moment. Because we have expanded medicaid. We are now we have a program to cover illegal immigrants. We are allowing people up tw one hundred and thirty eight percent of the poverty level to sign up for Medicaid. We have able bodied, childless people that are on Medicaid. None of these people were actually intended to be covered by Medicaid. Medicaid is our biggest expenditure in the state. I understand what do we

Well, first of.

All, the program that one of the programs you were talking about for undocumented immigrants, the covering all Colorado's and then there's the omni soluted program, which are both health insurance programs. I'm not sure why we need them both in the first place, but they both are. Those are fun for undocumented immigrants, and those are not actual Medicaid programs.

And here's the thing.

I keep asking everybody what criteria, eligibility criteria did the Feds change because I didn't see it in there. All they've done is said that those people who are able bodied and I mean keep in mind able bodied individuals without dependents get to be on Medicaid and we're paying for that. And all they said was you've got to work at least part time, or go to school or volunteer.

You've got to do something.

And the reality is from what I hear about sixty

And they should look at.

The application process because right now what I'm hearing is like, I don't know, I'm probably going to exaggerate here, but it's like forty pages or it's so got off along that people can't get through it.

So how about the.

Executive director, instead of going out and scaring people all over the place, just go fix that application process, go fix the redetermination.

So it's a heck of a lot quicker and smoother. I mean, we've got computers, we've got the Internet. We got to be able to figure this out.

So where would you suggest they start. You've got to cut a billion dollars. You've got a billion dollar shortfall. What's on the Barb Kirkmeyer shopping block to get us to a billion dollars quickly?

Well, this is where it's going to be painful, because the places that we need to look at are going to be tax credits and then new programs or programs that just aren't working. And this is where the Democrats have a really difficult time of I mean.

They wring their hands. I mean, seriously, Mandy.

Last year in the Joint and Budget Committee, it took four hours to cut one hundred thousand dollars out of the Department of Agriculture's budget. Four out and we were one point two billion dollars short last year in our know that we had to cut in our budget, but it took four hours for them. And I finally if I said, oh, oh my god, we're never going to get done afe you people don't learn how to make a decision.

But that was the Department of Agriculture. I'm like, you know what.

And we waited till the very end before we took the long bill across the street to the other ninety four legislators to vote on the school finance, to vote on higher education, and to vote.

On the medicaid provider rates. I think we should do those three things. First.

We should set our budget and then determine our budget around them and start cutting programs that you know, that just aren't necessary anymore, or that maybe we.

Just can't afford.

And so we're gonna have to look at programs, and we're going to look at some of.

Those tax credits.

Because here's what I heard yesterday in the hearing that the Democrat legislative leadership had and the two minority leaders were there as well, so the two Republicans basically I heard this, what are we going to do about those crazy Republicans back in d C. They have the audacity to tell people, we're going to cut your taxes and give you a tax break, and because of that, our revenues are going to be less so and this was ker McCluskey who said this, basically, so, because of those

Our revenues back up.

So those crazy Republicans in DC are saying we're going to cut taxes and give everybody a tax break, and those crazy Democrats.

In Colorado are saying, oh, not.

So fast, We're just going to increase your taxes. That is not something that Republicans will vote for. The governor's correct on that.

So let me ask this question specifically about that about raising taxes, because you are part of a lawsuit that has just been filed about the move that was done.

In another bill that essentially.

Says, even if you get a break on overtime, we're still going to count that as taxable income because we don't want to lose those tax dollars. You're arguing that that's a tax increase in a violation of Tabor correct.

Correct And it is a tax increase.

Anytime you have a change in tax policy that increases revenue to the state, you're supposed to go to a vote of the people.

Anytime that you have a tax change that.

Increases revenue, you're supposed to go to a vote of the people. And it specifically says in that statute, and it was House Build twenty five, twelve ninety six, it says that you're right that if the federal government exempts taxes on overtime, we are going to add them back on.

We are going to add on a tax.

I think it's pretty clear that they should have gone to back gone to a vote of the people to see if they wanted to tax their overtime. Sorry, I just have to laugh about it because it's crazy to me that they think that's okay. You know, like they can't figure out how to manage a budget, They can't figure out how to govern, they don't know what their priorities are. This is one party control. They could do anything they wanted to do because it is one party.

They've got the majority. I'm in the minority.

Yeah, they've gotten us in this budget mess all by themselves. The first thing they did is they blamed COVID. Remember, I mean, we got all this money. It was supposed to be for one time spending, but gosh, we just could and help ourselves. So we turned it into ongoing spending, and we started overspending and overspending and overspending. And then because we can't we can't blame COVID forever, they started blaming Tabor.

Tabor's the problem, you know. Tabor's why we don't have nice things in government.

That's what Senator Jeff Bridges used to say all the time, and he finally stopped saying it because I would retort back, Tabor.

Is why the people could have nice things.

You know.

Tabor is what limits government, and that's what we need. If we didn't have tabor, oh my gosh, we'd be even in worse shape.

But so then they blamed it on Tabor. Well, now they figured out, you know, in our.

June forecast, they already figured out we were going to have to make.

Cuts to tax credits and cuts to programs. We already had this discussion. This was not new, this was all prior to the federal bill passing.

And now it's like, oh wait a minute, why miss this opportunity.

Let's just blame it on the Feds.

Let's blame it on the Republicans back there, because silly, crazy Republicans are just trying to give you.

A tax relief.

So I'm gonna use it later and see if I can make a map of which states are now facing a budget shortfall because of the big beautiful bill. Let's just assume that that's correct. I bet you there's a bunch of states that aren't.

That's the thing.

It's like, why are we in this pickle when other states are not in this pickle? And I think that's the big thing? Or why not ask why not have the Republican leadership go and say, look, we need ten percent from every department. Can you guys find it. We'd love for you to provide for US programs, redundancies, whatever you think is not working, whatever we can take. Give us ten percent. If we find out we don't need

And everybody.

Now it's a private company, so it's a little bit different in terms of incentive. But everybody went back to their departments and said, where do we have ten percent? They then provided them the list and it was painless because.

Everybody had buy in.

You know, everybody was already on board with with what we needed to do exactly.

So I did that at the Joint Budget Committee and I said, look, everybody, you just need to cut ten percent because here was the thing.

You know, we were trying to find one point two billion.

Part of that was the three hundred and fifty million from the you know, ballid measure for back the Blue, the Prop one thirty, and you know, I figured out a process for that to make sure that, you know, we were able to work that into our budget. But I told everybody in in the sessions that we were having, we have hearings first, we have briefings at the Joint Budget Committee, with.

Departments, then we have hearings, and then we have.

Figure setting the whole way through. I'm like, you guys need to cut ten percent.

I told judicial.

You know there's the judicial branch like no, no, no, we need new judges, we need to do this, we need.

All this stuff. I mean, they wanted to increase their budget skyrocketed. I lectured them all. I'm telling you, I said, we need ten percent cut.

They wouldn't come back in and you know what, again, I'm on the minority.

It's me and.

Representive Taggart were the only two Republicans on a six member joint Budget Committee, and the other four Dems were like no, they just wouldn't make all those cuts.

They just couldn't make the cuts. Even this year.

On that last day before we were again closing out the budget and bringing it over to the other ninety four members, I told them all, I said, you realized you've looked at the overview, right you realize that we have one time cuts in here, one time spending at least a half billion dollars that I can add up.

In my head right now.

That's we're going to have to add it on to that next year and We're gonna have to find that next year, and there aren't going to be any more couch cushions to look under. There's no more shellgame shenanigans

To my earlier point, I know you're in the minority, and I'm not trying to beat you up, but I would love to see Republican leadership kind of go to the Democrats and say, look, we don't want to make these unpopular cuts. We don't want to cut things that are going to be detrimental, So why not get the buy in from these different departments. It takes the pressure off of us of having to make these difficult decisions when we're asking people in these various departments to cut

I don't envy you. I agree, I don't envy you. This special session, I agree with you.

Yeah, yeah, I think it'd be amazing. So I'm going to call Rose and see if i can put that our ear because at a bare minimum, one of the things I want to see out of the Republican Party in the state. And we've got new leadership in place, and from what I understand, there's a pretty intensive focus on winning elections, not just being ideological pure or or you know, making sure that we're saying the right things.

But there is this separation between the branches, right between the legislative branch and the administrative branch, but even within with the budget, when it comes across the Street. We all the legislators have the opportunity to amend the budget and put their fingerprints on the budget, and Republicans do come up with amendments and say, you know, let's cut this and cut different things. Like Senator Pelton said, why aren't we cutting our you know, legislative increase, Why aren't

Yeah, and so we.

Just can't get it through, you know, and the Governor's office, they're his departments. They don't I mean, I'm not saying they don't try to work with us, but they don't have to.

And certainly when it comes to the budget, everything's a secret.

Even that meeting yesterday with the leadership, you know, all that information that was there, the Democrats had it before.

The Republicans did, Like we got it at the meeting.

Most of them you could tell by the scripted messaging and the scripted questions that they.

Had it at least a couple of days in advance.

The newspaper had it in advance before anybody else. I mean, so we don't even get it. So they do a lot of stuff behind closed doors. They talked just to amongst themselves. They don't want to include the Minority Party because again one party control, they don't have to, so they just go off on their merry little way doing whatever they want to do.

Over spending.

It's like a Senator Rich said at one point, she goes, we don't need a special session, we need an intervention to help them with their addiction to overspending.

I thought, I'm going to use that.

Janets everywhere I can, because that is it exactly. And again, we can try, we can try to have meetings. I mean, just for example, I asked Senator Bridges, who is the chair of.

The Joint Budget Committee. I asked him.

Yesterday in a text, like why are we not having we meaning the Joint Budget Committee? Why are we not having this type of hearing? Why aren't we getting this information? We're the ones who deals with this issue. It's in statute, it's supposed to be us. Why aren't we doing this? He doesn't respond. Then I said, can't we have a meeting?

Doesn't respond. He has not responded to me.

So I told Minority leader since them this morning and I said, Look, if he doesn't respond by.

Tomorrow noon, I say we schedule our own meeting.

Invite the chief economists, you know from Legislative Council Services. We invite Director Fernandino from OspB. We invite Craig Harper from the as the director of the Joint Budget Committee, and a few other people, probably Commissioner Conway the Division of Insurance, and we ask them our questions. So I don't need them.

We don't need them to give us the presentation. Again.

We need to be able to ask them questions and start drilling down on this as to what can we really start cutting.

And so that's where we're that's where we are headed.

If if we can't get a hearing with the Joint Budget Committee, then we're just going to do our own thing.

Senator Barb Kirkmeyer is my guest. I will be talking to you, I hope through this special session, and boys, this one's going to be fun to watch. Thank you for making time for me today.

Yes, absolutely, thank you, and you have a great day. And let's keep go cutting that budget

Aim into that that Senator Barb Kirkmeyer, we'll be right back