As if Colorado lawmakers haven’t done enough to hamstring the state’s employers — or scare off those seeking to locate here — one of the legislature’s ruling Democrats now wants to give job creators another kick in the shins. 

State Rep. Lisa Feret, D-Arvada, would force larger businesses to pick up some of the tab for any of their employees receiving Medicaid. Maybe for those receiving SNAP coverage, too.

Apparently, it’s not enough those employers pay state and federal taxes, just like the rest of us, and thus help fund all public assistance. More fundamentally, they created their employees’ jobs in the first place — without which lower-income workers would be even worse off. 

Some would say the employers deserve the public’s thanks. 

Feret would penalize them, instead. 

Certainly, the state government’s expenditures have been soaring for Medicaid, the publicly funded health insurance program for the poor, and for SNAP, aka food stamps. Both are jointly funded by the state and federal governments, and Colorado’s state allocations for Medcaid in particular is consuming an ever-larger share of the entire state budget. 

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis’ proposed budget for next year attempts to rein in Medicaid spending. But a lot of legislative Democrats don’t like that approach. So, Feret would shift the burden to what she must think are the bottomless pockets of employers. 

The Colorado Chamber of Commerce’s news service, the Sum & Substance, reports that Feret will introduce a bill when the legislature convenes next month requiring companies with at least 1,000 workers in the state to pay for a portion of the Medicaid benefits for each of their part-time workers enrolled in the program. She is looking at slapping a similar levy on companies for their employees who receive SNAP benefits.

In addition to underwriting Medicaid, Feret also seems to hope her proposed policy would prod more employers to beef up their own health-care coverage for their employees — whether or not they could afford it.

“These companies are making hundreds of billions of dollars — with a ‘B’ — in profits … and they are still getting hundreds of millions in benefits in Medicaid or SNAP for their workers,” Feret said told the Sum & Substance. “If we are messaging and creating a conversation around this policy in the correct way, it should create behavioral shifts in these companies about offering health insurance.”

Is it splitting a hair to point out the employers in such cases aren’t the ones “getting hundreds of millions in benefits”? The workers are.

Meanwhile, the workers are getting hundreds of millions more in wages from their employers.

The freshman lawmaker, who can point proudly to her public service as a military veteran and a social worker, doesn’t appear to have any experience running a business. If she had, she might not assume boosting employee benefits is as easy as popping open the cash register till.

Then again, she’s now serving alongside many many likeminded lawmakers — who similarly don’t know what it’s like to keep a business afloat or create jobs. They seem to think there’s no level of mandates and regulations business cannot withstand. 

Indeed, the state Chamber concluded in a comprehensive study last year on the state’s regulatory climate that, “Colorado is the sixth most regulated state in the nation with 45% of its nearly 200,000 regulations being excessive or duplicative.”

Covering the cost of those regulations doesn’t just come out of “profits” — a convenient catchall among business bashers — but also out of employees’ wages. And proposals like Feret’s would ensure employees earn even less.