This Denver Gazette piece by Marianne Goodland lays out a budget story that should make every Colorado taxpayer sit up a little straighter. The article reports that Colorado’s program covering health care for pregnant women and children living in the country illegally has blown far past its original price tag. What started as a 2022 estimate of about $27 million in general fund spending for 2025-26 has now ballooned to nearly $90 million for that year, with projections topping $112 million in general fund dollars for 2026-27.
Goodland’s reporting ties that spike directly to enrollment that came in far above expectations. The program launched in 2024, enrolled 5,283 people in its first year, then jumped to more than 24,000 in 2025-26, with projections of more than 30,000 next year. All of that is happening while lawmakers are staring down a massive budget shortfall and scrambling to find cuts across state government.
The article comes from The Denver Gazette, and Goodland does what good budget reporting ought to do. She follows the money. She also notes that this program passed on a strict party-line vote, and that even budget staff are now warning the costs are rising fast enough to threaten an already strained general fund.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Colorado Democrats sold this as manageable. Turns out their calculator may have been powered by wishful thinking and oat milk.
- The original estimate for general fund costs was about $27 million. The reality became nearly $90 million, and the next projection is more than $112 million. That is not a rounding error. That is a face-plant.
- Enrollment did not just creep up. It exploded, from 5,283 in the first year to more than 24,000 the next, with more than 30,000 projected ahead. Government keeps acting shocked when incentives work exactly like incentives always work.
- Budget staff now recommend trimming dental, long-term services, and behavioral health benefits under the program to save about $17 million. In other words, the same people who built the hole are now showing up with a teaspoon.
- Meanwhile, Colorado is cutting and squeezing in other areas, including Medicaid-related services that affect citizens, while this program keeps chewing through tax dollars. That is the part normal people understand perfectly well, even if the folks under the Gold Dome pretend not to.
My Bottom Line
I do not blame a child for needing care. I blame politicians who keep making expensive promises with somebody else’s paycheck, then acting stunned when the bill shows up like a bull in the kitchen. This is what happens when ideology drives budgeting. You get headlines about compassion, followed by spreadsheets that look like a controlled demolition.
Here’s what matters for Colorado families. We were already staring at a giant budget hole, and this story came first. That means the warning lights were already flashing before the broader shortfall became impossible to ignore. You cannot run a state this way. You cannot tell hardworking Coloradans to pay more, get less, and clap politely while government rewards lawbreaking and calls it moral leadership.
And let’s be honest about the politics. This did not happen by accident. This came from choices. Party-line choices. Choices made by a ruling Democrat machine that has spent years confusing virtue-signaling with governing. They open the door, expand the benefit, lowball the cost, and then when the numbers explode, they reach deeper into the taxpayer’s pocket like that was the plan all along.
Colorado voters have a decision to make this fall. If people want more of this, keep sending Democrats back to the Capitol and act surprised when the buffalo gets milked again. I think Coloradans are smarter than that. We need a governor who understands that compassion without limits is not policy. It is surrender with a press release.
Source: The Denver Gazette
