The cost of obedience: How Colorado’s senators strengthened economic malfeasance

By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

It is both sad and disappointing that Colorado’s two U.S. senators are incapable of independent thought. As the simple puppets of their overlords, they have selfishly voted fifteen times NOT to reopen the federal government—even though their “no” votes hurt the Coloradans they supposedly represent. 

Colorado was already struggling economically before the federal shutdown. 

Between January 2023, the start of the post-COVID economy in the U.S., and August 2025, job creation in Colorado had been growing at less than half the national rate and unemployment was growing at around twice the national rate. 

How state unemployment changed since January 2023: Colorado up 58.5% vs U.S. 28.5%.

How state employment changed since January 2023: U.S. up 2.0% Colorado up 0.9%.

This was already a recipe for disaster. Things will be much worse now.

The federal government shutdown seriously impacted the ability of 39,647 active-duty military personnel, 24,194 national guard/reservists, and 54,300 federal government employees in Colorado to support their families and loved ones. Those impacted individuals will have had to draw down whatever savings they had to keep body and soul together, cutting back on spending wherever they can since the shutdown started.

Delays and fewer flights at Denver International Airport, the state’s largest employer with more than 40,000 employees, have disrupted work schedules and wages for many workers there too.

Uncertainties and delays providing SNAP benefits to 584,500 Coloradans (9.8% of the state’s population in 2024), also disrupted the ability of many to adequately support and feed their families. 

With fewer Coloradans spending less because of the shutdown and uncertainty around when it might end, state and county sales tax revenues will be down, small businesses will have suffered, few new jobs created, and unemployment increased.

And all for the sake of the 282,483 Coloradans (6.8% of all residents) who have Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace health insurance plans and whose benefits were TEMPORARILY expanded and subsidized during the ill-managed COVID shutdowns when insurance companies were paid (bribed?) to ensure that ACA premiums weren’t increased overly much. (The average full-price monthly premium reportedly increased from about $584 in 2020 to an estimated $619 in 2025.) 

What the yes-men, Senators Bennet and Hickenlooper, wanted to do was lose a cow for the sake of a cat (with apologies to Mark Twain) by continuing to directly pay their friends in large health insurance companies $35 BILLION of tax payer funds annually with no requirement or obligation for those big health insurance companies to reduce the premiums they charge ACA policy holders. 

These extraneous annual payments to the health insurance companies are set to expire at the end of 2025 and given the failure of ACA to reduce the cost of health insurance to the masses, as promised by politicians and the president when the program was enacted, why keep throwing good money after bad? 

It may not be until well into December that the full impact of the damage done by this shutdown in Colorado can be fully assessed but when it is, you can bet Senators Bennet and Hickenlooper will blame someone else for it because the buck never stops with them.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.