Colorado Democrats warned Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s budget bill will leave struggling Americans poorer while rewarding the wealthy with big tax breaks as the Senate narrowly passed the legislation following a tense, around-the-clock session. At the same time, the state’s top Republicans praised Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” as a blueprint for prosperity and a safer America.

Colorado’s two Democratic senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, joined all Democrats and three Republicans in voting against the bill, making for a 50-50 vote that required Vice President JD Vance to step in to break the tie. The nearly 900-page package heads back to the House of Representatives, which passed a different version of the legislation in late May by a single vote, for final passage.

The bill makes permanent tax cuts enacted during the first Trump administration and adds new ones, including a temporary end to tax on tips. It also cuts $1.2 trillion in spending over the next decade on Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food stamp benefits and clean energy programs. The bill grows spending on border security and deportations to $350 billion. Budget analysts project the legislation could add more than $3.3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, which Senate Republicans disputed.

“Republicans voted to leave working families behind, threaten the health care of millions, and sell out our kids’ future just to hand more tax breaks to the wealthy few,” Hickenlooper said on X after the chamber passed the bill. “It’s a betrayal of Colorado and American values.”

In a release describing his vote against the package, Hickenlooper noted that Republicans voted down more than a dozen amendments he proposed or co-sponsored, including bids to prevent cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and tax breaks for clean energy.

“This is pure lunacy, and downright cruel,” Hickenlooper said. “Republicans have voted to kick 17 million Americans off their health care, push hundreds of rural hospitals toward closure, wipe out millions of American clean energy careers, and add trillions to our national debt. And for what? For lavish tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”

On the Senate floor overnight, during the debate on the bill, Bennet said the Republicans’ bill “takes us further in the wrong direction.”

“Many young people today can’t afford to live on their own, and they may never be able to afford a house,” Bennet said. “They can’t afford health care or child care. They can’t count on a quality education for their children in too many parts of America. Some are really worried about whether they’re going to be able to afford a child at all.”

Added Bennet: “But instead of addressing any of these challenges, we are debating a bill tonight that will make the wealthiest Americans even wealthier and the poorest Americans, even poorer, half a million of whom live in Colorado, while adding millions more to the debt, which working Americans are going to have to pay back. That’s what this Republican trickle-down economics comes down to, no matter how you dress it up.”

Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat and former five-term congressman, called out Colorado’s four Republican House members — U.S. Reps. Lauren Boebert, Gabe Evans, Jeff Hurd and Jeff Crank — in a statement urging the chamber’s lawmakers to “end the madness and do right by Coloradans by starting over on (the) federal bill.”

“Today, Republicans in the Senate voted to kick Americans off health care, raise costs on insurance, kill jobs, increase our deficit and debt, and make it harder for kids to access food,” Polis said. “This shameful vote comes at the expense of hardworking Coloradans. This bill is bad for our communities, bad for our economy, and will increase the deficit and balloon our national debt. It’s time for the House to rise to the occasion and do their part to protect Americans from this bill and start over.”

Boebert, the state’s senior Republican elected official and a steadfast supporter of Trump’s agenda, said in a fundraising email sent hours before the Senate vote that the reconciliation package is “a plan to encourage growth and fund our priorities.”

Included in the bill, she said, are “business-friendly tax cuts, long-term Medicaid reform (and) better budget accountability.”

Boebert noted that she recently appeared alongside Evans, a freshman, on the steps of the state Capitol in Denver to defend the bill only to be greeted by what she described as “staged progressive protesters,” adding that she and Evans “refused to let their fear-mongering dominate.”

 For his part, Evans said Tuesday in an op-ed published in Voz that the Republicans’ bill amounts to “doubling down on putting Americans’ prosperity first.”

“The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ isn’t just a catchy phrase,” Evans said. “It is a vision that provides real, tangible benefits which make life safer and less expensive, while also being better stewards of taxpayer dollars. Republicans are fighting for a bolder future for our country and are doubling down on putting Americans’ prosperity first.”

Evans listed elements of the bill, including boosting spending on border security and preventing the 2017 Trump tax cuts from expiring, as many of them are scheduled to do in December without legislative action. In addition, he asserted that the bill “also removed the fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicaid,” calling that “a crucial change that will save the program for years to come.”

“This fiscal sanity and compassion is a pro‑family, pro‑America approach to protecting the longevity of Medicaid,” Evans said.