Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in November of 2019 proposed a fiscal year 2021 Colorado state budget of $34.5 billion. Eight months and a COVID-19 crisis later, he and the Democratic Party-controlled state legislature approved a $30 billion state budget for the fiscal year that began July 1. That is $4.5 billion less than originally intended.

Democrats have been winning elections in recent decades, but extra-party events have undermined the Democrats from investing as much as they would like in their traditional priorities such as public K-12 education, public higher education, infrastructure, and health care for the poor (Medicaid).

Those extra-party events are the TABOR Amendment to the state constitution, the Great Recession of 2008, and, this year, the coronavirus pandemic.

This analysis assumes that, when they gain political control, Democrats want to invest government money on expanded social services. For this trait Republicans charge Democrats with being “big spenders.”

The narrative goes like this. Back in the 1980s, Colorado Republicans were enjoying the long presidential coattails of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and George H. W. Bush in 1988. The Republicans had solid majorities in both houses of the Colorado state legislature, which prevented Democratic Govs. Richard Lamm and Roy Romer from spending much money on Democratic priorities.

This period of Republican dominance started coming to an end in the 1990s when Democrat Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992. With the Reagan-Bush Republican coattails gone, the Democrats began electing more state legislators and occasionally taking control of one house of the state legislature or the other.

These legislative victories enabled the Democrats to take control of the state Reapportionment Commission in 2001 and gerrymander both houses of the state legislature in their favor. In 2004, the Democrats stunned the Colorado political world by winning majorities in both houses of the state legislature for the first time in decades.

But when it came to spending money, the newly empowered Democrats had a problem. The TABOR Amendment to the Colorado state constitution, adopted in 1992, put strict limits on state revenues. Increases in state taxes required the approval of state voters, and state expenditures could not grow faster than both population growth and inflation. Referendums on statewide tax increases were difficult to win, and budgets limited to population growth and inflation made it hard to keep up with the state’s fiscal needs.

A bright spot occurred when Bill Ritter won the governorship for the Democrats in 2006. His expansive spending plans for Colorado state government were ended, however, by the Great Recession that began in the fall of 2008. As the national and state economies suffered through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, state revenues dropped, and a Democratic governor had to take a financial butcher’s knife to state budgets rather than increase them.

Bill Ritter declined to run for re-election as governor in 2010. Doubtless the stark state fiscal situation due to the Great Recession of 2008 (and his resulting low poll numbers) helped convince him to voluntarily drop out of Colorado electoral politics.

This brings us to the present moment. Colorado Democrats rode the anti-President Trump blue wave of the 2018 elections into winning solid control of both houses of the state legislature and elected liberal Democrat Jared Polis governor. In the meantime, a booming national and state economy was hyping state revenues from income taxes and sales taxes.

Surely the session of the Colorado legislature beginning this January 2020 would enable the Democrats to raise spending on public schools, public colleges, health care for the poor, and transportation. Best of all, in the favorable political atmosphere created by the rapidly expanding national economy, there was talk of perhaps, at long last, convincing the voters to loosen the stranglehold of TABOR on state revenues.

And then the coronavirus arrived in Colorado in February of 2020 and ruined everything for the Democrats. The state economy suddenly went bad and tax income fell precipitously. With the grudging approval of Gov. Polis, the Democratic state legislature, which has adjourned for the year, was forced to reduce spending rather than dramatically increase it. The legislature approved nearly 200 fewer bills this year than it usually does. Higher education took another big cut. Virtually everything had to be cut. And the bad economy dismissed all thought of citizens voting favorably on increasing taxes or limiting TABOR.

We acknowledge the accomplishments of Colorado’s Democrats since they took control of both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s office. They have strengthened the rights of racial and ethnic minorities, protected gays and lesbians, and reformed police powers. They have continued to make voter registration and all mail-in voting for state elections easier. They eliminated the death penalty.

Please note that most of the Democratic Party achievements listed above did not cost much money.

As for the Republicans in Colorado, they have lost control of state government over three decades but have seen their fiscal conservatism protected by TABOR, the Great Recession of 2008, and the coronavirus pandemic. Those Republicans who share the Libertarian Party’s dislike for big government and big spending may have, in a strange backhanded sort of way, been the biggest winners of all.

We are certain Democrats will continue to try to win votes by promising to increase expenditures for public K-12 education, public higher education, Medicaid, and highways and passenger trains. Will they ever succeed at getting the needed tax revenue? Colorado is a progressive state on most social issues and conservation matters, yet it is much more an anti-tax state than most people appreciate. Meanwhile Colorado Democrats have to practice artful cutting at the same time they pledge to make major investments in their traditional priorities.