Two months ago, the General Assembly paused floor and committee work to help slow the spread of COVID-19 and protect the public, lawmakers and everyone who works in or visits the Capitol. During this pause, lawmakers have been helping constituents and connecting Coloradans with critical information, services and essential resources. House Democrats have held over 90 virtual town halls with public officials and reached out to thousands of older constituents through virtual phone banks.

On May 26, the General Assembly will reconvene. As we all adapt to life with strict social distancing, we know that neither our work, nor how we do it, will look the same as it did on March 14. To limit in-person contact, we’ll likely only be in session for a few weeks.

The first order of business in the House will be to pass a balanced budget. We’ve been looking for every opportunity to find savings and reduce program costs, and we may have to make cuts to nearly all critical services. We’ll need to pass legislation implementing Amendments Y and Z and legislation to allocate the federal funding we’ve already received. We also need to pass the School Finance Act and several “sunset bills,” or these programs will start to wind down. We know people and small businesses are hurting right now, and we’re hard at work researching and drafting new legislation that could help Coloradans regain their footing.

The legislative picture has changed dramatically since February, and it’s clear that both the public health situation with COVID-19 and our significant budget crisis will impact nearly everything the legislature does when we come back. On Tuesday, budget forecasting experts revealed just how bad this budget crisis will be.

Unless we get more help from Congress, we’re going to have to make significant cuts to K-12 education, support for seniors, mental health, higher education and transportation. These cuts will have to total about $3.3 billion.

Our state has a very lean budget. For decades, it has underfunded the programs Coloradans need to have a fair shot, such as literacy, job training and higher education attainment initiatives. Exacerbating our current situation is the fact that TABOR has made it impossible for Colorado to ever fully recover from economic downturns. It has artificially constrained our budget and led to perverse outcomes, like having a booming economy but cash-strapped schools and crumbling roads.

Without a new relief package from Congress, cuts of the magnitude we’re facing could be the largest our state has ever seen, and they will devastate our communities. Nearly everyone will feel the impact in some way. These cuts will likely touch every aspect of our budget, from funding for affordable housing, health care and economic development programs, to schools, colleges, mental health care and corrections.

The Joint Budget Committee is working through nonpartisan staff recommendations for balancing the budget. They are looking at every line, large or small, to find funding for our schools and critical health and safety programs that serve our most vulnerable. The options on the table are painful. They include cuts to programs that serve Coloradans with intellectual and developmental disabilities or programs that allow hardworking students in high school to earn college credits, and so many more.

This is where Coloradans need us to work together to find the right cuts to protect our most vulnerable, and we invite everyone to the table to work with us. No one wants to make cuts that may hurt our constituents, but we were elected to lead, and right now, that means we must make really painful decisions to responsibly balance the budget.

We will do everything we can to prioritize critical education and public health and safety services, as we work to ease how painful this budget will be. We are going to evaluate every decision by how we can best protect Colorado small businesses, families, students and our most vulnerable during these unprecedented and deeply challenging times.

Rep. KC Becker represents House District 13 in the Colorado General Assembly and is speaker of the House of Representatives.