By Eric Galatas
With the November midterms now less than two weeks away, Colorado voters are hearing a range of perspectives on Amendment 87.
The measure would collect more than $2 billion from people who earn more than $500,000 a year to invest in healthcare, education and childcare programs. Colorado is expected to face another $1 billion budget shortfall, largely due to rising Medicaid costs.
Adam Fox, deputy director of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, which supports the measure, said cuts to the healthcare program serving the nation’s poorest residents under the Republicans’ House Resolution 1 are making the budget crisis worse.
“Because of H.R.1, Colorado is expected to lose as much as $2.5 billion a year in funding for Medicaid by 2032. That’s ultimately going to put healthcare for hundreds of thousands of Coloradans at risk,” Fox stressed.
Fox explained Amendment 87 is in part an attempt to claw back some of H.R. 1’s federal tax cuts, which gave $1.4 trillion to households earning $500,000 or more per year, to help pay for core services.
The conservative group Colorado Dawn recently warned Amendment 87 would raise taxes on seniors and veterans but the claim was exposed as false by 9News.
Gov. Jared Polis, whose net worth is estimated to be $400 million, is against the measure because he believes small and midsize businesses would pay most of the taxes.
Pushing back on Amendment 87 opposition
Fox pointed out 96% of revenues generated through Amendment 87 would come from the top 1% of taxpayers, who earn more than $2.5 million a year on average. The measure would cut taxes for 97% of Coloradans.
He noted if owners of small and midsize companies take home less than $500,000 after covering all of their business expenses, they will not pay more taxes under Amendment 87.
“Businesses making over $500,000 a year in pure profit, those are the ones that will pay more. And what we know is the vast majority are multistate or multinational corporations that can afford this,” Fox contended.
Like the majority of other states, Colorado taxed people with higher incomes at higher rates until 1987, when Republican lawmakers folded a flat tax into the state’s constitution.
Since then, teachers earning $50,000 a year have paid the same percentage of their income as billionaires.
Business groups and the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute have placed a competing initiative on the November ballot. If approved by voters, Proposition 136 would keep the state’s flat tax in place.
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