Colorado’s Democratic leaders blasted congressional Republicans’ tax bill as a “complete betrayal” Tuesday after the bill passed the U.S. Senate, a big step closer to fulfilling a major piece of President Donald Trump’s agenda.
The legislation is now on the precipice of full passage later this week, though one Colorado Republican congressman has already signaled he may not support it. While the massive bill would cut taxes primarily for the wealthy, state officials have also warned that it will slash Medicaid and food assistance, prompting tens of thousands of Coloradans to lose health insurance while further straining the state’s finances, as well as its already struggling rural health system.
“This bill is a massive wealth transfer from the working class to the rich,” U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat from Aurora, said on social media. “It would kick millions off their health care, take away food assistance for millions and add trillions to the national debt.”
After a daylong vote-a-rama, Senate Republicans passed Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” Tuesday morning, with Vice President JD Vance arriving to break a 50-50 tie in the chamber and send the bill back to the House.
The proposal includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts in part by making 2017 reductions permanent, boosting the child tax credit and adding deductions for older Americans. It would balloon federal deficits by nearly $3.3 trillion over the next decade, nonpartisan analysts estimate, while funding Trump’s mass-deportation program, slashing Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion, and rolling back clean energy policies and funding.
Gov. Jared Polis’ office indicated Tuesday that the bill would have substantial financial costs for Colorado. Changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, would require the state to take on as much as $200 million in new costs. New Medicaid work requirements would cost $57 million to implement, his office said, while Medicaid would lose more and more each year, reaching as much as $550 million by 2030.
Projections from congressional Democrats indicated that six rural hospitals could close in Colorado as a result of the Medicaid cuts and that nearly a quarter-million residents could lose health insurance.
In separate statements Tuesday, U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado called the bill “pure lunacy,” while Sen. Michael Bennet castigated it as “a massive step in the wrong direction.” Colorado’s Democratic House Speaker, Julie McCluskie, said the bill was a “complete betrayal of the American dream” that would “cruelly strip health care from over 100,000 Coloradans and increase costs for working families.”
An analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimated Colorado taxpayers would get total tax cuts of more than $10.45 billion next year, with more than 60% of those savings going to people who make $168,400 or more per year.
The bill now heads to the House, where it originated and where Republican leaders have indicated they want to vote on the bill’s passage as soon as Wednesday. The margins in the House are expected to be razor-thin: When the bill initially cleared that chamber, it did so by a 215-214 vote, with only Republicans in support.
‘Significant changes’ needed, Hurd says
And on Tuesday, one of the Colorado Republicans who previously supported the proposal signaled opposition this time around.
“The Big Beautiful Bill sent back to the House from the Senate is going to require significant changes in order to pass,” U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, who represents much of the Western Slope, said in a statement to The Denver Post. “I look forward to working with leadership and my colleagues to pass a bill consistent with the promises we made on the campaign trail.”
Asked what changes the congressman wanted, Nick Bayer, Hurd’s chief of staff, said Hurd was “reviewing the proposed changes now.” Hurd previously signed a letter calling for the Senate to abide by the House’s Medicaid cuts, which were smaller but still totaled over $800 billion.
In a statement Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s spokesman, Drew Sexton, said the congresswoman was still reviewing the bill to ensure it “complies with President Trump’s and the 4th District’s priorities” of tax relief, border security, reforms to the Medicaid and food assistance programs, and “getting rid of the Green New Scam.”
Messages sent to Colorado’s other Republican representatives, Jeff Crank and Gabe Evans, were not immediately returned Tuesday. In an op-ed, Evans described the bill as “a vision that provides real, tangible benefits which make life safer and less expensive, while also being better stewards of taxpayer dollars.”
The cost of providing the bill’s tax cuts, state officials have warned, is extensive cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, which provide health care and nutrition benefits to hundreds of thousands of people across the state. Earlier estimates from the state’s budget office projected the then-current version of the bill could cost Colorado between $900 million and $2.5 billion per year.
“Today, Republicans in the Senate voted to kick Americans off health care, raise costs on insurance, kill jobs, increase our deficit and debt, and make it harder for kids to access food. This shameful vote comes at the expense of hardworking Coloradans,” Polis said in a statement Tuesday.
He, like McCluskie, called on the state’s Republican members of Congress to oppose the proposal.
Gauging impact of Medicaid cuts
KFF, a nonpartisan health care think tank formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, estimated last month that Colorado would lose roughly $11 billion in federal Medicaid spending over the next decade under the bill. The bill’s changes would strip 155,000 residents of their health coverage by 2034, the organization said.
Of the reductions, $1.5 billion would hit rural Colorado, leading to 23,000 residents losing Medicaid coverage in those areas, according to KFF.
Those estimates were based on the House version of the bill, which proposed less-severe Medicaid cuts than those adopted by the Senate on Tuesday. Under the Senate version, 11.8 million Americans would lose health care, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The state Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, which oversees the Medicaid program here, did not yet have fully updated estimates on the impact of the Senate version on the state, a spokesman said Tuesday morning.
“There’s nothing beautiful about this bill,” Lydia McCoy, CEO of the Colorado Center on Law and Policy, an anti-poverty advocacy group, said in a statement. “Medicaid recipients will lose access to the health care that keeps them alive, and hospitals across rural Colorado will close their doors for lack of funding. The cruelty of this legislation is exceeded only by its short-sightedness.”
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