People Are Hurting & Want Change: What Vermonters Told Me During Our 
Town Hall

Dear Fellow Vermonter,

I held a town hall with Senator Peter Welch this week to hear from Vermonters about your concerns and to answer your questions. More than 30,000 Vermonters joined by phone, and tens of thousands more from Vermont and across the country tuned in online. This was the highest number of Vermonters we have ever had listening in for a telephone town hall meeting.

One thing was clear to me: People are hurting, people are angry and people want change.

I want to thank each and every Vermonter who joined us for taking the time to stay informed, listen in and ask important questions. Vermonters asked us about everything from  healthcare to housing, to Trump’s war with Iran and his attacks on our northern neighbor. Below are some of the questions Vermonters asked as well as my answers. If you weren’t able to join by phone, you can watch the complete town hall HERE.

This country and this world face enormously difficult issues, and we have got to sit down, have hard conversations and figure out how we go forward together.

In the richest country in the history of the world, we can provide a decent standard of living for every man, woman and child. That is not utopian. That is what good public policy can do.

We're the only major country that doesn't guarantee healthcare to all as a human right. If Canada could do it and if Europe can do it, you know what? We can do it, too.

We should not have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth while we give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top 1%.

Once again, thank you very much to everyone who joined us. If you would like to ensure you always receive a call for our telephone town meetings, register HERE. I look forward to continuing these discussions.

Sincerely,

The questions and answers below are slightly edited for clarity and length.

Patricia from Castleton — With so many problems here and abroad, where do you start to bring our nation back from the brink?

First, I think we must address the issue of oligarchy, in the sense that never before in world history have so few people had so much wealth and so much power. The top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 94%. One person owns more wealth than the bottom half of American households. I believe we need to impose a tax on billionaires and use that money to protect the interests of the elderly, children and working families.

Issue number two is the unbelievable amount of money that billionaires — through their super PACs — are spending in this election. Elon Musk said he wants to spend $200 million to make sure Republicans control the Senate. Just this week, the crypto industry said they’re going to put $30 million into a Senate campaign in Ohio.

In Vermont, people go to town meetings, and we argue whether we spend $500 here or $1000 there. But here what you have is billionaires buying elections. And we can’t transform America and make government responsive to the needs of people unless you have campaign finance reform. So that, to me, is a very big issue.

Thirdly, I don’t have to explain to anybody in Vermont that our healthcare system is broken. Costs are sky high; we don’t have enough doctors; we don’t have enough nurses. We need to move in a very different direction. We need to end the absurdity of America being the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people. I strongly support and have introduced legislation for Medicare for All, which Senator Welch is a cosponsor of.

Two other issues out there: Artificial intelligence will be the most transformative technology in the history of humanity. It’s going to impact everybody. I worry about the existential threats.

And needless to say, climate change is sitting out there. We have the warmest year after year after year, and I don’t have to tell people what that’s doing to the whole world.

So, to my mind, those are some of the issues and, if — as I hope — Democrats regain control over the House and the Senate, they have got to have the guts to stand up to the big money interests and to start fighting for working class families that are hurting all over our state and all over the country.

Rhiannon in Arlington — What more, if anything, can be done to create affordable healthcare options?

As I trust everybody knows, Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which to my mind was the worst piece of legislation in modern history, did two things: it threw many millions of people off Medicaid and did away with the subsidies in the Affordable Care Act. And the result of that is that people in Vermont who were on the ACA saw a doubling, tripling, and in some cases, a quadrupling of their rates. So, short-term, we have to restore those programs.

But we have to be clear, the current healthcare system is not working. And I want everybody to appreciate — it’s not that we’re not spending enough money on healthcare. We are spending twice as much money on healthcare as the people of Europe, in Canada and elsewhere, who somehow manage to provide healthcare to all of their people with decent quality.

The problem is that the current healthcare system, in my view, is designed to make billions of dollars in profits for the insurance and drug companies — which is happening. And we need a healthcare system that says its function is to provide quality care to all people. And we need to get rid of the profiteering of the drug companies and the insurance companies, and the misplaced priorities established by these guys.

If people don’t go to a doctor, they get sicker. They end up in the emergency room at great cost. If you keep people healthy, you ease suffering and you save money. So in my strong opinion, we have got to join every other on Earth and move to a Medicare for All, single-payer system.