Last week, members of the Vermont House and Senate gathered for an all-day, pre-session briefing on the issues they will have to confront when they return for real in January. The agenda included presentations on another looming double-digit property tax increase, our collapsing healthcare system, infrastructure woes, and our generally moribund economy. Serious stuff.
But kicking off this parade of red-flag waving was a five-minute speech by Senate President Pro Tem, Philip Baruth (D/P-Chittenden Central). And while he did mention the crises outlined above, the crux of his message was that these are not the problems he intends to deal with. To quote the senator:
Last year we were facing multiple crises and emergencies simultaneously. Our hospitals and our health insurers were showing real signs of strain and in some cases signs of potential collapse. Our property taxes had spiked and then spiked again. We were still dealing with the long-term effects of catastrophic flooding. And all of these crises are still with us this year in one form or another. But as we gather today there is a larger emergency looming – a more all-encompassing crisis – that we will all of us confront this time out.
Yikes! A larger issue than a 12 percent property tax increase, bringing the five-year total to 41 percent, so people are being forced out of their homes to pay for an education system that’s being outperformed by Mississippi? A larger issue than our lone health insurance provider teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, along with half a dozen local hospitals, while Vermonters are paying far and away the highest premiums in the nation? More dangerous than an economy made stagnant under the burden of high taxes and over-regulation? I’m biting my nails and shaking in my shoes! What could be worse than all this?
Ah, yes… Donald Trump. Though Baruth is careful not to say Trump’s name out loud, his message was clear.
And as unbelievable as it might sound, or as it might have sounded to us a dozen years ago, that crisis is being produced on a daily basis by our own federal government.
And what has the “federal government” done that dwarfs the danger posed by our collapsing education and healthcare systems, rising energy costs, near-highest state and local tax burden in the country, demographic crisis because we’re driving younger, working-age people out of the state, resulting from, among other things, an acute housing crisis? Cue scary music….
Last year we were worried about what might come to pass following the 2024 elections. This year we know all too well the on the ground reality. The federal government has tried its best to withhold federal money from SNAP and LIHEAP.
Uhhhhhh… couple points. First of all, it was US Senate Democrats, including Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch, who voted no less than fifteen times to keep the government shut down, and the funding for SNAP and LIHEAP locked up – not the administration. And, the day before Baruth’s speech – plenty of time for a re-write – the evil federal government sent Vermont over $20 million, fully funding its obligation to the heating assistance program. Similarly with SNAP, following the Schumer Shutdown, the federal government fully restored SNAP funding through September 2026.
So, when Baruth claims, “Washington has tried to keep food from the poorest among us, and they’ve tried to eliminate heating assistance for those most at risk in the middle of winter,” he is just plain lying. To the extent the delays in benefits occurred, it was the votes of his own party that caused them. And, in either case, these crises he deems bigger than property taxes, healthcare, etcetera ad infinitum have been resolved without his having to “fight” (somehow) on the floor of the Vermont State House.
Baruth also cites the Trump Administration’s recent decision to deny a disaster relief request regarding July flooding in the town of Burke. One can debate that decision for sure, but the total amount of damage/relief funds in question: $1.8 million. With an “M” not a “B.” Our state budget is over $9 billion, so this concerns .0002 percent of state spending. Existential crisis superseding education taxes, healthcare, and all the rest? I think not.
The last priority Baruth elevates over the real issues under the purview of state government is federal immigration law. The Trump administration wants to enforce it. Baruth does not. And he’s willing to ignore the possibility that you get taxed out of your home next summer because:
Even as we speak, two of my constituents, a Winooski mother and her second grade child, are being held in a detention facility in Dilley, Texas.
About that…. The woman, in the US illegally, was flagged not by ICE, but by Canadian border authorities when she tried to enter that country using forged documents, including a fraudulent green card, which is a felony in the US. Why is the woman’s daughter being detained as well? Shouldn’t Baruth be happy that we are not separating families? Isn’t that the policy he and his party have been touting for years? Congratulations! You won that one.
And here is Baruth’s concluding message to his colleagues:
So that is the question — the main question on my mind — as we enter this session. How will we respond to these provocations and outrages? Will we fight for the rights of those targeted by this federal administration? Will we close the inevitable gaps in funding to make sure that our people eat? That our people survive the winter? Will we push back in our bills and our votes in our committees in our several political caucuses because this is not a partisan issue. We will all need to fight, Republicans, Democrats and Progressives. Will we push back against this attempt to bend Vermont to a cruel federal will? I believe we will. I believe we will push back, again and again, in all the legal ways open to us. Out attorney general is demonstrating that every day. But make no mistake, this session will be more like a horror movie than a Hallmark Holiday film. Because although emergencies and crises are our stock and trade, this time the call is coming from inside the house.
There, he said it. These non- or minor issues are “the main” – his words – issues on his mind. Not your ability to pay your property taxes, or if they are being used to teach your children anything useful. Not your ability to pay for your health insurance premiums and, if you can, find quality care in a timely manner. Not the housing crisis, or rising electric rates, or solving our growing labor crisis, or the $30 million shortfall in the Transportation Fund needed to get federal matching to pave our roads, or really anything else that is the job of the state legislature to manage.
Philip Baruth, a UVM professor, lives in an ivory tower encased in the Chittenden County bubble. He is freakin’ clueless about the real problems Vermonters need solved yesterday. All he has to offer is ginned-up hyper-partisanship and higher taxes to pay for an ideological agenda that does nothing to better Vermonters’ standard of living. Quite the opposite. He’s right that this session will be a horror movie, and the call is coming from inside the house – the Vermont State House, and the Senate President Pro Tem is the one on the line. His speech here is the message left on Vermonters’ answering machines. Listen and pay attention.
