Last night, Democratic Senator Irene Aguilar’s enormous tax increase on Colorado’s families (aka a single payer health care system for Colorado) passed out of the Senate Health and Human Services committee on a party line vote. It’s the first hurdle of several before the proposal lands on the 2013 ballot for voters’ consideration.
The next step for this legislation is a vote of the entire Senate. In order to pass out of the Senate, Aguilar’s Assessment must garner a two-thirds vote from the Senate. That means that Aguilar would have to find four Republicans willing to saddle Colorado’s families with tremendous tax increases. From the responses to the introduction of the bill to committee, it’s not likely. Republican Senator Kevin Lundberg, a member of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, explained his objections:
“This bill is Obamacare on steroids. Not only did Senate Democrats pass a bill last week tied to an annual 1 billion dollar tax increase, now they are foisting another extreme bill that raises taxes on Colorado families and small businesses by almost 300 percent.”
Aguilar may be deluding herself about the cost, however. Here is how Aguilar described the massive tax increase to the Colorado Springs Gazette just last week:
“I’m sort of known as the doctor who wants to give everybody quote, unquote ‘free health care’, which is a little bit of an exaggeration. I’d just like it to be affordable for everybody.”