“We have to draw a line in the sand and say, ‘no,’” Rep. Becca Balint said.
Vermont’s three members of Congress are casting the federal government shutdown that started Wednesday as a result of their Republican colleagues’ failure to come to the negotiating table to address looming funding cuts that are expected to raise health care costs for thousands of people in Vermont and millions more around the country.
The government shut down at midnight Wednesday after lawmakers missed the deadline to come to a spending deal ahead of a new federal fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1. As a result, hundreds of thousands of federal workers are expected to be furloughed, which could hamstring government services nationally and in Vermont. President Donald Trump’s administration, meanwhile, has threatened to use the dispute to permanently eliminate some federal workers’ jobs entirely.
“Nobody likes a shutdown. And, I’m among them. But we’ve got a real threat — ongoing threat — to the health care of Vermonters and Americans,” said U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., in an interview Wednesday afternoon after stepping off the Senate floor.
After votes that could have averted a shutdown failed in the Senate on Tuesday, the chamber again did not come to a consensus in another vote Wednesday. It’s not clear yet when a deal might be reached, or what that agreement would look like.
In the leadup to the impasse, the Republican-controlled House passed a bill that would keep the government funded at its current levels through Nov. 21. Senate Democrats refused to support that bill, however, in an effort to force Republicans to negotiate over Affordable Care Act subsidies that are slated to expire at the end of the year.
Vermonters stand to lose a collective $65 million if Congress does not extend those expanded tax credits, per a report submitted to the state Legislature earlier this year.
Democrats have also staked their support on Republicans rolling back cuts included in President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill, which passed over the summer. About 15 million people nationwide are set to lose health coverage in the next decade due to the GOP-led law’s cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, among other measures, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.
Senate Democrats introduced their own short-term measure that proposed funding the government through October and extending the expiring health care subsidies, but Senate Republicans blocked it. Republican leaders have continued to insist they won’t negotiate over the Obamacare credits until after the government has reopened.
Vermont’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Becca Balint and Sen. Welch, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, charged in interviews and statements that Republicans, who control the White House and both houses of Congress, were at fault for the shutdown.
They pointed to comments Trump made in a TV interview last month that his GOP allies should not “even bother dealing with” Democrats’ demands ahead of a shutdown.
“Square that circle for me — how exactly is it the Democrats’ fault when Republicans have said, openly, ‘we’re not going to work with Democrats?’” Balint said in an interview Wednesday afternoon.
For her caucus to continue to “give and give and give is hurtful to Americans,” Balint added. “We have to draw a line in the sand and say, ‘no.’”
Balint joined all but one other House Democrat in voting against the House’s short-term spending plan in mid-September. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Welch and Sanders joined most of the Senate’s Democratic caucus in rejecting the House’s proposal.
Welch said in an interview Wednesday afternoon that he sees no other choice than shutting down the government in order to prevent, or at least attempt to prevent, people from losing key health coverage.
He said that “a relentless attack by President Trump on the rule of law” in recent months was the difference that prompted more of his Democratic colleagues to hold the line against a GOP-led spending package ahead of a looming shutdown. In March, 10 members of the caucus — not including Welch or Sanders — joined Republicans to pass a stopgap funding measure effective through the end of September.
Sanders, in a video posted to his social media feeds just hours before the shutdown went into effect, said that in addition to addressing his concerns about looming cuts to people’s health care, congressional Republicans would also need to reverse the tax breaks included in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that are estimated to benefit the country’s wealthiest households, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“At a time of such massive and growing inequality, it is insane, in my view, to be giving a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top 1%,” Sanders said. “If President Trump and Republicans want my vote, they will have to rescind that tax break for their oligarchic friends.”
Story Written by Shaun Robinson, VTDigger