by Guy Page
A week ago the Democrat-led Vermont Senate reshuffled its leadership, a little. But it still has a left-leaning, guns-a-blazin’ in the Climate War look, led at the top by returning Pro Tem Phil Baruth.
Over in the House, there’s a tussle for leadership between two House Speaker candidates who both have a strong record of voting for increasing school taxes and mandating carbon emissions reductions. Tweedledee is a Democrat. Tweedledum is an independent who votes with the Democrats and pushes Democrat legislation as vice-chair of her committee.
Recent Legislatures have spent too much time and taxpayer money on climate and education, while getting little real benefit in return. Their leaders have bragged incessantly about “doing the work” when really they’re just been leading endless virtue parades.
When the opening gavels convene the 2025 session, stepping back from the Clean Heat Standard precipice of doubling fuel prices might be the easier of these tasks. The Legislature’s own school financing study commission last week delivered the bad news that the root causes of our school funding woes are deep and entangled with the state’s OTHER legislatively-induced crises of housing, health care and public safety.
20 years ago I sent my young family to a hotel and gutted the living room ceiling and walls of our old Cambridge farmhouse. My crowbar and I built a pile of debris six feet higher and 10 feet wide.
When my seven-year-old daughter Imani walked into the room and saw the ginormous pile, she parroted back to me my parental words of instruction:
“Daddy made the mess. Now Daddy has to clean it up.”
Now I say the same to Baruth and his Dem majority team of Kesha Ram Hinsdale and Becca White and whoever becomes House Speaker.
You and your expensive climate laws and your kowtowing to the education establishment and your decades of refusal to allow significant new housing outside of a few urban areas have created a mountain of economic and social debris in our living room. You ignored advice from Gov. Phil Scott and the minority party whenever you could. Now you own the problem. Clean it up. Vermonters are waiting and watching.