The U.S. Senate approved a bill to continue funding the federal government just hours before a shutdown deadline at midnight. The vote went forward after enough Democrats agreed not to block the Republican bill with a filibuster. Vermont’s two senators were not among them.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Peter Welch, D-Vt., explained their opposition to the bill, which will keep the government running through Sept. 30, saying it gave President Donald Trump and his advisers too much budgetary power.
“I could not vote for a bill that allows Trump and Musk to cut federal funding at their whim and defund programs entirely without congressional approval or oversight,” Welch said, calling the actions of Trump and his adviser Elon Musk a “reckless, illegal rampage.”
Sanders said in a statement Thursday the continuing resolution “will provide a blank check for the administration and Mr. Musk to continue their savage war against working families, the elderly, children, the sick and the poor in order to lay the groundwork for massive tax breaks for the billionaire class.”
“This legislation will also provide a green light for the administration to continue its illegal and unconstitutional activities,” Sanders said.
Senators of two other northern New England states were among those who supported moving forward with the funding bill, following the lead of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Both of the Democratic senators from New Hampshire — Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan — as well as the two from Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Sen. Angus King, an independent, helped reach the 60 vote total needed to advance the bill. Shaheen and King also voted for the bill itself, which passed 54-46.
In a video posted to social media after his vote, Sanders called the passage of the bill an “absolute dereliction of duty on the part of the Democratic leadership.”
The Vermont senators decried the cuts they said would be allowed by the lack of specific language in the continuing resolution, including to veterans’ medical care, scientific research, disaster relief and flood resilience. Democrats instead had been looking to approve just a month of additional spending, during which they urged bipartisan negotiations.
Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., the state’s sole House member, echoed the other members of the federal delegation in explaining her vote against the resolution on Tuesday.
“This bill is another gift to Elon Musk and Donald Trump — giving them a pretense to further strip our checks and balances until Trump is truly a king,” she said. “If Republicans were serious about meeting the needs of Americans, they would have come to the negotiating table.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Federal shutdown averted in Senate without backing of Vermont delegation.