Fair Share America Brought the 14-State National Campaign to Colorado to Highlight the Harmful Impacts of the GOP’s Federal Budget + Tax Bill

“It is predicted that, at a minimum, six rural hospitals in Colorado will be closed down as a result of this bill—if not this year, then next year—and all six of those hospitals are in Congressional District Three." - Theresa Trujillo, Co-Executive Director of the Center for Health Progress at the roundtable event in Pueblo

“To see nationally the amount of damage that is done to families—primarily women and children—because of insurance denial is horrific. That’s all corporate greed." - Laura Sandoval Adams, a retired nurse and member of Center for Health Progress, describing the real-world consequences of the new law.

Pueblo, Colorado (July 10, 2025) – Yesterday, Fair Share America, Unrig our Economy, and state and local partners brought the “Stop the Billionaire Giveaway” national bus tour to Pueblo to highlight the devastating impact of the new federal budget and tax law signed by President Trump last week on Colorado’s families, communities, and economy.

The 45-foot tour bus, wrapped in a giant trillion-dollar bill, stopped in Colorado’s Third Congressional District to send a clear message: working families should not have to pay the price for Republicans’ tax handouts to billionaires and big corporations that Rep. Hurd voted for.

“Our sole focus is to hold members of Congress accountable for voting for the largest wealth transfer in the history of the country—while cutting services that our communities rely on as lifelines,” said Kristen Crowell, Executive Director of Fair Share America, during the Pueblo roundtable. “We are not just line items on a spreadsheet in Washington, DC. We are human beings who have paid our taxes, who have worked, who have held our communities up, and we deserve dignity and respect.”

Theresa Trujillo, Co-Executive Director of the Center for Health Progress and a Pueblo resident, shared that the damage from this bill is already beginning, despite being phased in over time:

“We all know that tens of millions of kids and seniors and disabled folks will be put off of healthcare—if not now, in years to come—and it’ll be like death by a million papercuts. All of the paperwork barriers that we’ve put up in order to push people off of Medicaid make health care unaffordable for all of us, even those fortunate enough to have health care through our employers.”

“There will be accountability, and that accountability work comes because promises were made and those promises were not kept. That accountability work will be done because we’ll all be deeply impacted by the $4 trillion in tax breaks that the mega-wealthy have been given—$1 trillion of which is coming out of cuts to our services.”

“Members of Congress like Jeff Hurd who voted for this bill will be haunted by this bill for a very long time, unable to hide from the consequences that this bill brings now and in the future. This was a gut punch for all of us who have been working, some of us for decades, to really move forward a better health system and better health care for all.”

Kevin Abernathy, an organizer with Center for Health Progress, described traveling to Washington, DC, in a last-ditch attempt to plead with Representative Hurd’s office.

“I was able to livestream him the whole time, and we got him on film saying that Jeff Hurd does not want to cut Medicaid in our district. He actually signed on to two letters—one with 11 other representatives on April 14, and another with 13 others on June 24—both to the Republican leadership saying, ‘We cannot be turning our backs on the people that need these services.’ And what did they do? In lockstep, all of them went and voted with leadership anyway.”

“It was really, really disheartening to see them all just fall in line with one another for their personal benefit—to remain in office, to get the luxury benefits of prestigious health care that none of us will ever get. That’s not okay.”

Abernathy also read from a constituent letter:

“David, one of our constituents here in Pueblo, said: ‘We need you to put us—the people you say you represent—first. I have never written an elected leader, and I participated in my first rally ever last month. My family and I will continue to speak out against your actions, even though it makes us uncomfortable. This is too important for too many people. We hope you will do the right thing.’”

Laura Sandoval Adams, a retired nurse and member of Center for Health Progress, warned that Pueblo families will suffer firsthand from these cuts.

“In my two decades of nursing here in Pueblo, I’ve seen a staggering system, and it’s going to get far worse. With the passage of this bill, people without Medicaid will now have to go to the ER for their primary care, and they will rack up medical debt. That medical debt won’t be paid solely by those patients. It’s going to spread to everybody. And I’ve seen that in practice.”

“We have a system based on greed at the expense of hard-working people who have paid into the system their whole life. Already in Pueblo, we’ve seen big-box hospitals take over our local hospitals. Services are being cut, and we already see that damage to women and children especially. This will not stand.”

Marisa Lopez, a community and retiree organizer with Colorado WINS, spoke about how these cuts affect real families:

“My single mom escaped a domestic violence situation, and for most of my childhood, it was just me, my mom, and my sister. We really depended on Medicaid. We really only went to the doctor, went to the dentist, because of Medicaid. We also had some days where we were only able to eat because we had food stamps.”

“It is very sad to me that there are going to be mothers like mine who are going to be struggling even harder than they already are. Without that assistance, it’s just going to be gone. How are they going to take their kids to the hospital if they get hurt? Kids get hurt all the time.”

In closing, Kristen Crowell emphasized, “We have to be the ones to share the truth. We need each other more than ever. The divisiveness in our politics—we need to hold each other together.”

A special thanks to our event partners including: New Era Colorado, The Colorado Fiscal Institute, and Center for Health Progress.

Learn more about the “Stop the Billionaire Giveaway” bus online and on social media: @FairShare_USA on X and @FairShareAmerica (FB, IG, BS, Threads, TikTok).

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