Members of the Colorado Senate met with their respective caucuses on Tuesday to discuss the state’s proposed $46.8 billion budget for fiscal year 2026-2027, which passed through the House over the weekend following lengthy debate.

The full Senate will begin debating the budget on Wednesday.

Joint Budget Committee members Sens. Jeff Bridges and Judy Amabile gave the Democratic caucus an overview of the 661-page Long Bill.

Among those pages are significant cuts to most of the state’s agencies and departments, which JBC members say were necessary as the state faced a $1.2 billion deficit at the start of the session.

After reviewing the budget and its more than five dozen orbitals, several Senate Democrats briefed their colleagues on the amendments they planned to introduce during the next day’s debate.

Democratic Sen. William Lindstedt said he planned to introduce several amendments addressing proposed cuts to the state’s adoption, foster, and kinship care programs. Two orbitals passed by the JBC would, respectively, place limits on monthly subsidy reimbursement payments for the Adoption Assistance and Relative Guardianship Assistance Programs and eliminate financial assistance and support for local human services departments serving non-certified kinship homes.

Denver Sen. Matt Ball plans to introduce an amendment to redirect funding from electric buses to the Veterans Treatment Court system. A similar amendment passed in the House, though it takes money from film subsidies and shifts it to VTC.

Julie Gonzales, also of Denver, said she has several amendments prepared to remove the caps on Cover All Coloradans, and Lisa Cutter of Evergreen is bringing an amendment to fund additional staff in the Treasurer’s Office to assist Coloradans with unclaimed property.

The Cover All Coloradans program, which provides health care coverage for children and pregnant women living in the U.S. illegally, was created through 2022 legislation. The program was originally expected to cost the state about $27 million. Instead, actual costs have reached nearly $90 million and could rise above $112 million next year.

To control costs, the JBC recommended capping program enrollment and lowering the age limit for children’s participation from 19 to 18. House Democrats also objected to the proposed cuts.

Some of the most impactful — and contentious — cuts made to the proposed budget include reducing the state’s reserves from 15% of the general fund to 13%, which Bridges told the Democratic caucus serves as a precautionary measure should the state face a recession in the near future, the likelihood of which he said is “sort of up in the air” given the war in Iran.

Another cost-saving measure suggested by the JBC is transferring $130 million from the state’s Affordable Housing Fund, created through Proposition 123, to the general fund.

Some Democratic lawmakers argued that doing so would override the will of voters, who approved Prop 123 in 2022 to dedicate more funding to affordable housing projects.

However, the measure includes language allowing the state to use fund money for other purposes in years when there is no TABOR surplus, which is the case for the 2025–2026 fiscal year.

Marianne Goodland contributed to this story.