Eliminate optional Medicaid to elderly and disabled nursing home patients making more than the federal poverty standard: $25 million.
Reduce child welfare by 10 percent, cut child-care allowances for the poor in half and eliminate state support for licensing child-care providers: $23 million.
Trimming the Colorado budget if Referendum C fails will be a piece of cake.
All you have to do is get a copy of The Nasty List. That’s the nickname of the list the Joint Budget Committee staff draws up to show how to balance the budget without new sources of revenue.
Legislators have not yet asked for a Nasty List based on the possible defeat of Referendum C, which asks voters to let the state keep five years worth of revenue that would otherwise be refunded to citizens under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR. But Sen. Dave Owen, a conservative Republican member of the Joint Budget Committee, says the latest available Nasty List would generally apply. And state economists say that if C fails, it will force some $365 million in cuts to balance next year’s budget.
So let’s take a look at where the cuts might come if C goes down. After all, opponents of the referendum insist this state has plenty of pork to slice.
Start with those piggies in the nursing homes and the young welfare porkers gobbling up handouts.
Of course, that’s only $48 million in cuts. We still need $317 million more. Thank goodness for The Nasty List. It shows us how the state can save $78.5 million by eliminating “per-pupil funding for students that repeat a grade level.” What’s a few more dropouts in a state where the dropout rate already stinks?
Eliminating state support for the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind will save $8 million.
And who said the counties deserve $23.5 million in state funds to help them detain arrested juveniles? By law, that’s a local responsibility. So let the counties raise their own taxes to keep Junior in the stir after he vandalizes a school. Unfunded government mandates are a way of life.
This is amazing. We’ve already cut $158 million and gotten most of it from the have-nots.
Now, let’s abandon the hospitals and clinics that treat patients without money or health insurance. The Nasty List says the state gives them $10.5 million a year to help with indigent care. There’s another $1.4 million in grants going to disabled adults who don’t qualify for any kind of federal aid and $1 million more that help pay for organ transplants for the poor.
These cuts are no big deal. The poor will always be with us. If state voters defeat Referendum C, the sickest of the poor just won’t be with us quite as long.
And do those poor old people getting cavities filled from a state dental fund really need healthy teeth with one foot in the grave?
If we get rid of drug and alcohol treatment for all but the most seriously affected prisoners, The Nasty List says we can cut $2.3 million from the budget. An additional $8 million in savings can come from eliminating other state alcohol- and drug-abuse treatment programs.
The developmentally disabled really aren’t entitled to the 36 new foster-care beds the state added a few years ago or to family support or to early intervention or to an independent-living program that keeps them out of institutions. That $2 million could be going instead to TABOR refunds of 100 to 200 bucks a person for each of the next five years.
As the opponents of Referendum C love to preach, the less government, the better. So let’s hear it for The Nasty List. Let’s hear it for cutting district attorneys’ pay and not filling the jobs of judges up for retention. Let’s hear it for eliminating the capital crimes prosecution unit and the state suicide prevention program. Let’s hear it for closing 20 state parks and raising state college tuition 40 percent.
Surely, each of us can figure a better way than those darn politicians how to spend our TABOR refunds.
Perhaps on an out-of-state weekend to escape the nursing home refugees and school dropouts cluttering the streets.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
