At the start of the General Assembly in January, legislators from both parties talked about working together to help out Colorado’s middle class.
The end result was toned-down rhetoric about doing the best they could.
Democrats pushed bills such as affordable housing, full-day kindergarten, an earned income-tax credit for the middle class, an insurance program for family and medical leave, helping Coloradans save for college and retirement, raising the minimum wage and capping interest rates on student loans and credit cards.
None of those measures passed.
Republicans sought to curb lawsuits against builders for construction defects, cut regulations on small businesses and pump potentially $3.5 billion into road and bridge work. Senate President Bill Cadman, from Colorado Springs, promised to revamp how the state refunds excess tax revenue under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights to direct a larger share toward lower- and middle-income earners.
Democrats killed those bills.
Almost half the state’s workforce — those earning between $35,000 and $100,000 a year — still struggles in the fast-growing economy that has , stagnant wages in the middle and a remarkable spike in housing costs.
Both parties pointed to a of 10 bills — eight of which passed — that put government support behind job-training bills to prepare Coloradans as young as high schoolers for good-paying jobs. The argument is that a skilled workforce would help attract those industries to the state.
“I think we knocked a hole in it,” said Democrat House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst on Wednesday, the session’s last day.
State lawmakers also worked together to pass rural economic-development measures and free up about $100 million for higher education, which they said would hold down tuition increases.
Mark and Beth Jones, a Clear Creek County couple with a combined income of about $60,000, kept tabs on the legislature.
“I couldn’t figure out what they’re trying to do most of the time, or how what they’re doing helps us,” Mark Jones said. “It’s great they’re trying to create jobs and trying to raise the minimum wage. But we have jobs, and we make more than the minimum wage. So I don’t see anything new to help people like us.”
Credit and blame
This was the first session after the Republicans won back the majority in the Senate, while Democrats retained control of the House. That dynamic set up a struggle over which party would get credit or blame in the political war for the hearts and minds of the middle class.
On many fronts, the parties fought to a standstill.
“I am sure some households will benefit, but the reforms have not been as ambitious as necessary to significantly improve things,” said Martin Shields, director of the Regional Economic Institute at Colorado State University. “To me, the two biggest missed opportunities were the (earned income tax credit) and minimum wage. The medical leave insurance program would have been a wonderful accomplishment.”
Currently, the earned income tax credit for low- and middle-class wage earners is triggered by excess revenue under TABOR. A bill Democrats tried this year would have removed the trigger and made the tax credit immediate and permanent.
Rep. Brian DelGrosso, the House Republican leader, said he wasn’t about dividing Coloradans into classes to focus on some at the expense of others. He wasn’t one of the leaders beating the “middle class” drum at the beginning of the session.
“I don’t think we’re here to help certain groups; we’re here to help everybody,” he said. “When we run pieces of legislation, we should aim at helping everybody.”
He pointed to Republicans’ failed transportation bills, which he said would have benefited “all classes of people and all kinds of businesses.”
Republicans tried and failed to raise $3.5 billion for statewide road and bridge projects over the next 20 years by renewing state transportation bonds first sold in 1999 to fund the $1.67 billion T-REX transportation project in metro Denver.
Fixing the economy
While Democrats tried to steer expected TABOR refunds, Republicans maintained that the money was more productive in the hands of wage earners.
When people spend money, it stimulates the economy and tax revenue while helping families, said Barry Poulson, a retired economics professor at the University of Colorado, an author and a senior fellow on fiscal policy at the Independence Institute, a Denver-based libertarian-conservative think tank.
The defense of TABOR shows the advantages of a split legislature, Poulson said.
“I’m a fan of competitive government,” he said of the House being controlled by Democrats and the Senate by Republicans for the first time in a decade. “Compared to the last couple of years, this is a hell of a lot better. They didn’t do a great deal of damage this year, which is great.”
Republicans’ winning the Senate forced compromises with the Democratic-led House, which probably throttled the ambitions of both sides, said Rich Jones, the policy and research director at the left-leaning Bell Policy Center in Denver and who has watched state government for 34 years. Jones said Republicans and Democrats, for the most part, played nice on economic issues for the middle class.
“I think it’s in the best interest of each side to show they accomplished something,” he said. “And that led them to sit down and find some things they could agree on, like jobs and small business.”
Poulson agreed with the grade Jones gave legislators on their middle-class efforts.
“An I for incomplete,” Jones said.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174, jbunch@denverpost.com or twitter.com/joeybunch
Staff writer John Frank contributed to this report.
