Time and again in our history, we’ve joined with the business, nonprofit and public sectors to successfully engage on ballot issues of significant impact to Colorado’s economic vitality. Earlier this week, we committed to develop a campaign to defeat Amendment 69, ColoradoCare (single payer health care).
Amendment 69, termed ColoradoCare by proponents, is a tax increase that creates a government-run system of universal health care coverage in Colorado to replace the current market-based system. If passed, it would create a $25 billion tax for health care coverage by increasing payroll taxes paid by employers and employees (employers would pay another 6.67 percent; employees would pay another 3.33 percent; and all non-payroll earnings would be taxed an additional 10 percent).
For us, the cost of this proposal alone – nearly the size of the entire current state budget (our current state budget is $27 billion) – was reason enough for us to begin researching the impacts of this ballot issue. Clearly, a tax increase of this magnitude could have significant impacts on all of us, from our quality of life to our economic vitality for our region and the state, making it the right issue for us to tackle.
We are in the process of organizing an executive committee, finance committee and advisory teams for this campaign that represent the vast diversity of Coloradans opposed to this initiative. As always, we will build a strong and diverse coalition to defeat this measure.
We want our members to know that we are working on your behalf on this issue. We will be in close contact with Chamber members as the campaign progresses and hope to engage each and every one of our 3,000 members in defeating this ballot issue.
The country is watching us — they envy our economy, but ballot issues like this cause great concern for businesses and nonprofits who are working in Colorado or considering coming here. This next year is critical as we continue to ensure every Coloradan reaps the benefits of our economic recovery — we can’t afford to have those efforts negatively impacted by this ballot issue. We look forward to working with you on another successful campaign but more importantly on continuing to drive our economic vitality of our state by ensuring all our sectors (public, private and nonprofit) can prosper.
Kelly Brough is president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.
