If Captain Kirk ever visited Colorado’s state Capitol in search of an elected Democrat who could balance a budget — or even a checkbook — there’d be nothing to enter in the captain’s log. 

He only would find beings addicted to spending and incapable of living within their means. A species doomed to extinction.

That’s Colorado’s ruling party, all right. With its lopsided majority at the legislature and its standard-bearer in the governor’s mansion, it only seems capable of taxing and spending. It grows government by leaps and bounds, year after year, never looking back — or ahead.

And when it runs out of money, it hustles taxpayers for more.

The Democratic majority, in fact, spends money like drunken sailors on shore leave — except, as Ronald Reagan put it, that would be unfair to drunken sailors. At least, the money they squander is their own. 

It’s more fun to give away other people’s money — as Colorado’s epic, $47 billion budget painfully reminds us. 

Such adolescent arrogance drives Capitol Democrats on fiscal policy. They have a totally awesome vision for a more caring, equitable, sustainable, illegal immigrant-embracing and, of course, less law-abiding and more criminal-coddling Colorado. 

But they have to pester their parents to pay for it all. 

Don’t you dare question their priorities. They know better — and their virtue knows no bounds. Like their over-the-top “Cover All Coloradans” health care program for illegal immigrants that now covers 30,000 women and children and will cost at least $112 million in the next budget.

If at any point, they’re told to buckle down and do the homework of paring back their bold plans a bit, and spending a little less, they pitch a fit and howl with indignation as they did during this spring’s deficit debate. They made only modest cuts — $1 billion-plus — compared with how much spending they’ve added over the years.

And they weren’t humbled. 

Hence, their even bolder plans for soaking more out of the taxpaying public in years to come. It will involve outflanking the state constitution’s TABOR — the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights — the only safeguard the taxpaying public has left. Their plans also include violating TABOR outright.

The devious Senate Bill 26-135, which was just about to pass Colorado’s legislature as of Friday, would press voters to erase untold billions of dollars in TABOR refunds to the public for the foreseeable future in the name of funding schools. As The Gazette’s news affiliate Colorado Politics reported late last week, a nonpartisan analysis found three-quarters of the money won’t go to schools but to the general fund — for lawmakers to spend as they see fit.

They also have included a blatant ripoff in the 2026-27 state budget. At the direction of Gov. Jared Polis, they are illegally keeping $306 million in surplus state tax revenue that TABOR says they’re supposed to refund to taxpayers.

Meanwhile, their activist allies outside the Capitol are peddling a ballot proposal to scrap Colorado’s simple flat tax and replace it with a dizzyingly complicated “progressive tax” — that will rake in billions more for lawmakers to spend.

Enough is enough.

Here’s some advice for the Democrats who control our increasingly California-sized state government: Quit spending so damned much money.

Get the state government’s fiscal affairs in order. Spend within your means and balance your budget — the way the rest of us have to, whether as private investors, publicly held corporations, nonprofit organizations, individual taxpayers, Democrats or Republicans. 

Stop looking for “tax loopholes” to close, or fees to sneak in through the back door — not to mention the strangling regulations you slapped on our state’s job creators. It’s all driving people and prosperity away from Colorado.

Give taxpayers a break — and get Colorado back on track.