Let's talk to a woman who is part of the Joint Budget Committee. She is State Senator Barb Kirkmeyer. Barb, you look well rested. You look like you caught up on your sleek a little bit, a little bit, So what did the legislature inflict on Coloraden's what did you?
What did you guys? Do we increase this tax We increase taxes? Well I didn't.
The Democrats and the legislature increased taxes. They took away a fee that we pay small businesses retaillers who collect our sales tax We took away that fee, that's the tune of twelve thousand dollars. It wasn't enough in the first place to pay them to collect our sales taxes. Typically it costs them about forty eight thousand dollars.
We took away twelve.
So now they're putting the bill themselves to collect our taxes. And we're selling two hundred and fifty million dollars worth of tax credits for two hundred million dollars.
So we're shortening ourselves fifty million dollars.
And you know that's it increase taxes by about two hundred and fifty million dollars. We're shorten ourselves by fifty million dollars in the general fund on the cell of tax credits, and we screwed over.
Small businesses yet again.
Wait, but they're making sure that planned parenthead gets more money.
Right, Oh, well that's true. Yes, that was in there. Okay, So Barb, I mean we did.
We did extend the AI bill, the deadline in AI artificial intelligence. We extended that to June first of next year. So that's a good thing. That was one good thing that happened.
So I actually voted for that.
Let's talk about where we are budget wise right now. Because the tax increases that you're talking about on small businesses, there's a zero percent chance that we're not going to see some kind of lawsuits against that. Michael Fields at Advance Colorado has already said he's going to add it to his lawsuit about other things that violate TABOR.
So what does that mean? I mean, let's just say.
A judge puts an injunction on on you know, collecting those taxes. What does that mean for our budget right this second?
It means we will be Right now, we are seven hundred million dollars in the red to start the next budget year, So we have to find that money to start even in the next budget year because.
We have to have balanced budgets.
So to start off a budget, you've got to have a budget that you can close out that's balanced as well, and those are that's a constitutional mandate.
So we had that already in play. That was in June eighteenth. We already knew that.
And then you know, with the passage of HR one, which gave us federal tax relief, and because our state tax code is tied to the federal tax code, essentially when they make changes, it changes ours, we also got one point two billion dollars worth of tax relief at the state level. So what that ended up doing is causing a seven hundred million dollars shortfall, a gap in this current fiscal year of tax revenues tax collections, and so we were trying to fill the gap. That's what
we were supposed to be doing. Now, there was nothing in the call, which the governor gets to set. Think of it as the agenda for the special session. Nothing in there that said we could carry any legislation, carry a bill to reduce spending. All it was was to increase taxes, sell tax credits, and like I said, it's screw small businesses out of that fee.
So where we and you you already we've talked about this before, but we're looking at a deficit for next year. And was that deficit in place before HR one passed, because weren't we offered Yeah, I mean, all of this is yes, okay.
So and then what HR one did is it impacted our tax collections because our taxes are going down at the state, so we're getting federal tax relief. We're getting some state tax relief still to the tune of one point two billion dollars. And what that did is it increased our you know, they keep calling it revenues.
Is tax collections.
Our revenues equal taxes, right, so it's the taxes you pay in or our revenues at the state. So our tax collections went down as a result of the tax breaks at the federal level.
And the Democrats are so upset.
God, we had to have a special session just to come back and increase some taxes back. So what they did is they increased it back from what I was trying to figure out. I mean, don't anybody go quote me on this number. But it's about two hundred and fifty two hundred and fifty three million dollars to try and fill that gap.
Well, the gap was.
Seven hundred million or more right somewhere in there. So now the discussion is going to be tomorrow. The Joint Budget Committee is meeting with the governor and he has you know, executive order privileges, and he's going to reduce spending supposedly, And I hear he's going to reduce spending.
This is what I hear.
I don't know. I mean, I'm a Republican. It's not like he comes to talk to me about it and tells me. But what I'm hearing is he's going to reduce spending by cutting Medicaid provider rates, which will effectively cut access for over one point two billion people in.
Our state that are US citizens.
And he's going to do that, and he's going to cut higher EDG and then what I'm hearing is, well, we will probably take a third of that. So he's going to do those kind of cuts up to two hundred and fifty million approximately again my guess, and then the last third of our gap, he's going to take out the reserves, which I just have to tell you. I mean, I'm sure you can all hear the frustration of my voice, because it is totally stupid.
To take money out of the reserves.
When we take money out of the reserves in this current fiscal year, we have a statutory reserve requirement of fifteen percent.
We just have to replace it in this fiscal year. It does nothing for us other than to say, yeah, we're making it look good.
But really, by the time we get into March of twenty twenty six, you're gonna have to replace that because we have to have a balanced budget before I can before we can introduce the next budget.
That's how crazy it is.
And then on top of it all, they sold tax credits, so instead of pausing the tax credits.
You know, tax credits are tax relief.
So generally Republicans, myself included, we support a lot of tech credits, not all of them, but we do support a lot of tax credits. So tax credits are tax relief. Okay, well, we have over two billion dollars worth of tax credits that we give out. Okay, we just fell below the tabor cap, which.
Means we now have no surplus.
There isn't going to be any tabor refund because there is no surplus. So instead of pausing tax credits, those goofballs down there said no, no, no, We're going to sell two hundred and fifty million dollars worth of tax credits for two hundred million dollars. So when they catch it in their tax credits sometime in the future when we have surplus, there's.
A constant's fifty million bucks.
Okay, let me clarify what Marv just said, because we start talking about this and people are like, I cannot keep up. But in order to eliminate taber refunds, this is just my take on this, and you can correct me if I'm totally wrong, in order to eliminate taber refunds, so they could then argue with the ballot box the taber is used with anyway, so why do we even have it, So then we would take any spending protections
off of the legislature. They have reallocated all of our table refunds using tax credits to other favored groups in their minds, maybe it's an expanded earned income tax credit, Maybe it's other kinds of tax credits that our table refunds are going to go fund. What Barb is saying, is why not just do away with those tax credits until we have a surplus again? Is that correct?
Correct? And we didn't even have to get rid of all the tax credits we have.
I mean, you know some I mean I don't know if I voted for the earned income tax credit, but I probably would. I mean, those are the least you know, people who can't afford things in our state, right, I mean, they're the most vulnerable among us. I mean, they're below sixty thousand approximate LAYD dollars in income that's coming in, and you know, I don't. I mean, they're probably not really paying that many taxes in the first place.
But let's give them a tax holiday. I'm okay with that. But you're right.
They turned tax credits. They turned our table refunds into tax credits for everyone else, and we have over two billion of them. All they need to do is pause seven hundred million dollars worth of them.
That's it.
So somebody just hit the text line Barb and said, Mandy, does Barb Kirkmeyer have any comment on the millions of dollars of state funded taxpayer grants to legislator run nonprofits? And NGOs run by people like Javier Mabriy, Lorena Garcia or others. I just saw a stat on X and I have not had a chance to look into that stat, but it showed how much money was flowing to these NGOs, and that is a concerning thing because that starts to
feel like a slush fund. And we've seen at the federal level that Democrats are very unhappy when their NGOs stop getting money, not because they're doing anything great, but because they're kind of, you know, a circular way to circulate more money into Democrat pockets. Is there a chance that any of that is happening here?
Absolutely, I've seen the same things out on X that have been being posted.
I'm just I'm not in session right now.
And plus then we had to do the special session stuff.
But I'm not in a regular session.
But when I get back into the Joint Budget Committee come November, I'm going to start looking into that.
And so my email is very easy. It's capital S. E. N.
Sen Kirkmeyer k I R K M E Y E
R at gmail dot com. Send me the information you have so I don't have to keep digging all by myself, and I'll start wherever you left off and see what I can find out, because that not only sounds like a conflict of interest to me, it sounds highly unethical that we are funding I saw the stuff about Representative Garcia on online, and it sounds highly unethical that we are funding a state legislator to the tune of millions of dollars for her and her family through what's called
a non governmental organization, a nonprofit organization.
Essentially.
I don't know what that nonprofit organization is doing for us, but what I do know is we need to start cutting in this state, and maybe that's the first place we should start.
Senator Barb Kirkmeyer, from your lips to the governor's ears, we both know it's not going to go the way we want it to. But I appreciate you and your fellow Republicans trying in a special session where the Democrats did everything but tell you to shut up and sit down. It was, of course they did. Let's talk again soon, Okay, all right, thanks for