Who loves you, Colorado? Not state Sen. Bill Cadman.
The Republican state Senate President made that perfectly clear this week when he responded to increasing pressure by Democrats and even members of his own party to have a real and full discussion about avoiding hundreds of millions of dollars in looming state budget cuts caused by Colorado’s whacky constitution chaos.
Cadman, channeling another tea party favorite, Donald Trump, blasted the pushback, chucking his promised bipartisan and cooler-heads leadership overboard. Instead, Cadman is now acting like and telling people he has some kind of powerful Republican tea party mandate to jeopardize Colorado’s schools, roads and growth.
“The people of Colorado took authority back from (Democrats) in November 2014, after (their) 10-year reign of error,” Cadman told reporter Charles Asby of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “Perhaps they should save their buckets of artificial righteous indignation for their re-election campaigns.”
Dude, your mandate is between your ears. Republicans won control of the state senate after the 2014 election by accumulating one more seat than Democrats — one single seat. Democrats still control the House by a much larger margin. And Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper still holds the pen to sign or veto any bill.
Cadman’s polemic dia-Trump stems from an argument over Colorado’s constitutional tax provision that requires voters to approve tax increases. There is no tax increase at issue here. The problem is the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights creates an arbitrary and convoluted budget baseline. If tax revenues grow past a certain point, even without a tax increase, money must be “refunded” to state residents. When Colorado expanded its federal Medicaid program as part of the Affordable Care Act, it also created a hospital fee to help offset that, a decision that enjoyed bipartisan support, because it made sense.
Now, some Republicans want that hospital fee, collecting about $350 million a year, to be counted as taxes, forcing a taxpayer refunds and a massive hole in the state budget.
Even though Attorney General Cynthia Coffman has said her office does not take issue with continuing to label the hospital fee as a fee and not tax revenue, and even though members of Cadman’s own party want to spend that Medicaid fee to pay the state’s Medicaid bills and avoid massive budget cuts, Cadman and a handful of tea party elites continue to hold the rest of Colorado Republicans hostage with the same kind of tactical fear and extortion that has elevated Donald Trump to the top of GOP presidential ticket.
He hasn’t done it alone. He’s had the help of the infamous right-wing extremists from Americans For Prosperity clan, the partisan political hammer of the dreaded brothers David and Charles Koch — the billionaire cash behind the tea party movement.
The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel illustrated just how low-ball this ridiculous battle for common sense has become by revealing how Americans For Prosperity began attacking Alamosa Republican state Sen. Larry Crowder for saying that he wants the hospital fee issue to come to the state Senate floor for full discussion. He and others don’t want Cadman to surreptitiously scuttle it in a Senate committee, which is exactly what he intends to do. For Crowder’s courage and honesty, he was rewarded with typical tea-party Trump treatment. And he told the GJ Sentinel he’s not afraid of the tea-party grip on his party here in Colorado.
“You honyocks at AFP want to pick a fight with me?” he said in a tweet, according to the GJSentinel. “Then get after it.”
You go, dude. I hope the rest of your party has your nerve and your back, because Cadman clearly doesn’t.
Senator Mandate just went further in showing how really out-of-touch and beholden he and his fellow tea-trump-eters have become.
“It’s astounding that the same group of Democrats who generated historic recalls of their own members, who incited a lawsuit against the state of Colorado from 55 of our own sheriffs, who caused nearly a dozen counties to seek secession from Colorado, and who pushed multiple billion-dollar tax hikes rejected by Colorado citizens, think they should be given the authority of the majority when it comes to bill assignments,” Cadman told the GJSentinel.
Wow. This is what you he thinks of Colorado Democrats, the millions of residents who elected them and the rest of us who have to suffer hugely damaging state budget cuts because, why? Because Cadman likes the insane political gridlock in Washington, D.C., so much he wants some of that for all of us here in Colorado?
No way. I don’t want Cadman’s tea-party politics any more, and neither does the rest of his honorable Republican colleagues who have grown weary of being bullied and bludgeoned.
Cadman needs to take his one-seat majority under serious consideration and rethink his obstinance. And if Sen. Mandate is unable to just get a grip, then he needs to pass the gavel on to someone more responsible and responsive to what really matters most here in Colorado: us.
Folow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com