DENVER — As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares for a final vote on President Trump’s sweeping tax cut and spending bill, Colorado Democrats are trying to persuade Republicans to vote against the bill.
Republicans have a razor-tight majority in the House and can only afford to lose three votes.
“We could defeat the bill today. We just need four of our colleagues,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, who represents Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District.
Colorado Democrats held a virtual statewide press conference on Wednesday.
Gov. Jared Polis said the Senate version of the bill will lead to more debt and healthcare cuts.
“When you increase the deficit by trillions of dollars, you're squeezing out everything else that we do and causing increases in taxes later, because a higher and higher percentage of the federal budget –- before you spend a penny on defense or health care or border security or anything –- simply goes to interest payments on the debt,” said Polis. “To be clear, this bill makes that worse, and our country will be significantly deeper in debt in 10 years if this bill were to pass. And that's why I encourage our Republicans from Colorado as well as from other parts of the country to defeat it.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the bill would add $3.3 trillion to the nation’s debt and increase the number of uninsured people by 11.8 million by 2034.
“What is in the bill now is going to cause dramatic suffering to the entire state of Colorado, the entire country,” said Colorado U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper.
Josh Shipley, who owns a solar installation company with eight employees on the Western Slope, is worried about provisions getting rid of clean energy tax incentives.
“We actually don't believe we're going to be able to stay in business,” said Shipley.
On the other side of the aisle, Republicans like Colorado Congressman Gabe Evans, who represents the 8th District, are defending the bill.
“This bill provides us the tools to finally secure the border once and for all,” Evans said in a video he posted to social media on Wednesday. “It gives us the ability to crack down on the cartels, the violent terrorists, the different organizations that are trafficking drugs and other poisons into our community.”
When the House passed its version of the bill in May, every Republican in Colorado’s Congressional delegation voted for it. And almost all of them appear to support the Senate version of the bill, which passed over the weekend.
The only Colorado Republican whose position remained unclear Wednesday afternoon was Congressman Jeff Hurd, who represents the 3rd District.
Last week, Hurd was among a dozen Republicans who signed a letter outlining their concerns with the Senate version of the bill, which makes deeper cuts to Medicaid, according to nonpartisan analysts.
“The Senate version treats expansion and non-expansion states unfairly, fails to preserve existing state programs, and imposes stricter limits that do not give hospitals sufficient time to adjust to new budgetary constraints or to identify alternative funding sources,” the lawmakers wrote. “We are also concerned about rushed implementation timelines, penalties for expansion states, changes to the community engagement requirements for adults with dependents, and cuts to emergency Medicaid funding. These changes would place additional burdens on hospitals already stretched thin by legal and moral obligations to provide care. Protecting Medicaid is essential for the vulnerable constituents we were elected to represent. Therefore, we cannot support a final bill that threatens access to coverage or jeopardizes the stability of our hospitals and providers.”
Colorado Democrats say they hope that means lawmakers like Hurd will vote against the bill.
"Hopefully that'll push them to either change the bill and then vote for it, or just vote against the bill and say, let's start over,” Hickenlooper said.
Denver7 reached out to Hurd’s office on Wednesday to ask about his position on the bill, but did not hear back by the publication deadline of this story.
