Now that the Colorado state budget proposal has appeared and lawmakers are wrangling over the numbers, the political narratives that will be used to sell the budget to voters and to defend against constituent anger in elections to come are taking shape.

This year it seems unquestionable that it will be a tougher budget for Republicans to spin than for Democrats.

For starters, there will be more spending. The budget is $26.8 billion.

As Senate President Kevin Grantham, a Canon City Republican, put it in a promotional video made by the GOP Senate caucus, “This year’s budget is “the largest state budget in the history of Colorado.”

That has been a major GOP talking point in budget discussions for years – because every year the budget grows. Grantham explains:

“It’s a pretty natural thing, given the growth in the state, and the growth in revenues, and the growth in spending.”

In other words, (a) it’s not our fault, and (b) when Democrats say the state needs to generate more revenue, well, revenue is growing – or to put it into the language of the stump: “What we have here is a spending problem, not a revenue problem.”

In fact, a first-blush talking point would have seemed to have been the deep cuts to spending proposed in the budget – $268 million would be a rich number to sell to conservative voters.

But the $268 million cut written into the budget was aimed at already desperately underfunded hospitals, and it would have decimated rural facilities that serve many Medicaid and Medicare patients – many of them likely Republican voters – who are already bracing for shocks in the national health care system that will mostly affect them and people like them in Colorado and across the country.

Also, that cut is meant to be shored up with the passage of a bill proposed by conservative Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, a Republican rancher from Sterling. His Senate Bill 267 would reclassify the state’s hospital provider fee as an enterprise fund, creating space in the state’s general fund under the spending cap imposed by the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. The move would free up some hundreds of millions of dollars for discretionary spending.

The shock of the Sonnenberg proposal is still settling at the Capitol.

Last year Republicans waged war all session and beyond against reclassifying the fee. They argued it was unconstitutional, that it went against the spirit of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, that it was a bandaid and a temporary fix to a continuing spending problem, where health care programs gulp up ever-larger pieces of the fiscal pie.

But the hospital provider fee will likely pass – Democrats will support it – as will an enormous unloved transportation bill, a referred measure that would hike the state sales tax.

Small government anti-tax groups could turn these proposals into toxic fodder, especially during primary season. But to what degree?

Sonnenberg is probably bulletproof out on the eastern plains, where his name is well-known.

And the men who crafted the transportation bill and who will surely vote for it – Grantham and Randy Baumgardner from Hot Sulphur Springs – are term limited.

Same with Larry Crowder, the wild card Alamosa Republican who has long supported hospital and transportation spending. Indeed, Crowder backed the hospital provider reclassification last year when no Republican would touch it – and at the time he was up for re-election. Nevertheless, no big money poured into his primary. Conservative groups likely wagered it would be worse to lose the seat to the Democrats and, with it, control of the Senate, than to hassle Crowder.

Indeed, you could almost see a smile stretching under Crowder’s mustache as his colleagues railed in the well during budget debate against the immorality of the long bill proposals designed to save rural hospitals and the reemergence of the now-Republican hospital provider fee proposal.

“Took a year to percolate. Very supportive of Sonnenberg’s bill,” he wrote in a tweet that read like a chuckle.

The tweet came on the heels of another in a similar vein: “Love it when press stories indicate that I vote on issues with the Democrats. Hell, they vote with me.”

Majority Leader Chris Holbert, a Republican from Parker, wrote an opinion piece for The Statesman that understandably aligned with much of what Grantham said in the caucus video.

He said that Republicans prioritized schools and transportation in the budget. He might soon begin to add rural hospitals to the mix.

“We increased spending on the state side to all of our schools in Colorado,” Grantham said. “So state spending to education per pupil has gone up.”

Republicans also fought runaway spending, Holbert says, checking the worst impulses of Democrats. In particular, they successfully opposed spending for a student sex survey, the state Obamacare exchange and for a program that would issue drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants.

Holbert also offers a reminder that “power is shared in our politically divided General Assembly” and that “the other side holds a stronger hand because the governor, too, is a Democrat.”

“Republicans keep only one person in mind as we armor-up for… budget battles – you, the taxpayer,” Holbert wrote. “We understand that all this revenue belongs to you, not the state. We know you want every dollar spent wisely. [W]e’re doing our best to keep taxpayers foremost in mind as we work to button-up a balanced budget this week.”

Or as freshman Republican Rep. Dave Williams from Colorado Springs put it in debate on the floor: “The paychecks of Coloradans do not belong to us.”

If the Republican priority is to spend as little of taxpayer money as possible and to do it effectively, Democrats are looking to deliver to as many Coloradans as possible the highest quality of life they can deliver.

House Speaker Crisanta Duran, a Denver Democrat, teed up discussion of the budget last week for members of the media, saying it had been one of the toughest budgets to negotiate in all of her time at the Legislature. She lamented that the effort to remove the state’s hospital provider fee from the general fund in order to raise revenue has stalled in past years in the face of Republican opposition.

She ticked off the main challenges state budget writers wrestled with for months and that now face lawmakers – the widening hole in education reserve funds, the strapped hospital budgets, the targeted property tax exemption for seniors. The losses in these areas are tough for the kinds of Coloradans they directly affect: young people, sick people, old people.

“I think about the people of Colorado – mothers, fathers, kids, people for whom we want to make sure we continue the quality of life we have in Colorado,” Duran said, transitioning into the budget speech she has had to deliver time and again this session.

“We have to make sure there’s economic opportunity for all, access to housing, that every boy and girl across the state has the opportunity to reach their full potential. We have to make sure we’re doing everything we can to have a budget and to problem solve so we’re able to reflect those values – and that’s what we’re going to be doing every single minute until the session is done,” she said.

“I think it comes down to the question of whether we’re going to stand on the side of ideology and extremism or are we going to stand on the side of problem solving and standing up for the people of Colorado?” she asked.

“So I think the budget is a reflection of a lot of tough choices.

“It’s been truly unfortunate we haven’t already turned the hospital fee into an enterprise up to this point,” she said again. “We’ll see if the latest proposal comes through.”

But Duran has the advantage of knowing she will likely have succeeded where her predecessors failed. She made deals with Grantham. Republicans agreed to the need to raise revenue for transportation upgrades, whether or not the transportation bill passes or whether voters support the referendum that the bill would place before them. At least some Republicans have come to see the logic of reclassifying the hospital fee. The fact is, spending will very likely increase on crucial state priorities.

House Majority Leader KC Becker, a Boulder Democrat, said House Democrats would likely tweak Sonnenberg’s hospital bill to prevent the general fund spending cap from dipping below present levels.

“There are two goals,” she said. “We want hospitals to enterprise, because that’s what’s best for hospitals, and we want to get the hospital fee out from under the TABOR cap, because that’s what’s best for the rest for Colorado, because that’s what’s best for the budget, that’s what’s best for schools and higher ed.

“We want to give our budget more flexibility so we can fund schools and other priorities,” Becker said.

Duran knows how she has to sell her constituents after the session is over.

“We have to be sure we invest in people in every corner of Colorado and we don’t leave people behind,” she said.

– john@coloradostatesman.com