Senators on Capitol Hill are in a stalemate over health care. The Senate is expected to take its sixth vote today on stopgap funding bills that would reopen the government, but with deliberations at a standstill, it appears unlikely that this will happen.
Sen. Peter Welch, a Democrat, has been serving in the Senate in 2023. A member of the Senate Finance Committee, he was Vermont’s representative to Congress for 16 years. In an interview on Vermont Edition, Sen. Welch weighed in the federal government shutdown.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Mikaela Lefrak: Senator, Democrats are saying that this standoff on Capitol Hill right now all comes down to one key issue, health care. You and other Democrats have decided to shut down the federal government over Republicans decisions to cut federal funding for health insurance. It's a big swing. Can you make the case for us? What exactly is at stake for Vermonters?
Sen. Peter Welch: Well, first of all, I really disagree with your characterization that we are promoting a shutdown. The fact is that when a bill comes over that passed by one vote from the House and it comes to the Senate, traditionally, there's negotiation about the terms of an agreement. What's happened here is that President Trump has done something that no president has done before. He has ordered my Republican colleagues to not talk to the Democrats. So, there is an impossibility if you can't have the two parties sit down to discuss a policy difference to resolve the policy difference. In fact, in my discussions with my Republican colleagues, many of them share the concern I have about the loss of the Affordable Care tax credits that make health insurance within reach for Vermont and for Americans.
It's going to affect folks in Vermont, as I've been hearing from Vermonters. But it's also going to affect folks in Texas and Iowa and Alabama. The other thing that's so significant about this is that Nov. 1 is a drop dead date. Folks who are getting help to pay for their insurance will lose the premium tax credits to assist in that. Nov. 1 is that date. So the continuing resolution that we have goes through Nov. 21. So basically, what would happen if we don't resolve this is that about 5 million Americans and about 45,000 Vermonters would be in desperate Jeopardy about hanging on to the health care that their family depends on.
Lefrak: So, there's no other way that this could be addressed, this the expiration of federal tax credits for health insurance in a way that's separate from the spending bill?
Welch: It's not so it could be done separately, but it would have to be done by Nov. 1, and obviously, it makes sense to have it be part of the spending bill. That's traditionally the place where, when you have a policy dispute, you'd resolve it and then have it move along through the legislative process. But the big deal here is that Nov. 1 is a time certain critical date. So to say we'll do it separately, or we'll do it later, basically capitulates and says that folks will be in jeopardy of losing their health care.
Lefrak: There was a press release that was sent by your office yesterday that had a line in it that echoes some of what you're saying right now. It said, "Government funding lapsed on Tuesday, and Senate Republicans have so far refused to work with Democrats to protect health care and reopen the government." I know you're saying President Trump has basically ordered Republicans on Capitol Hill not to negotiate with Democrats. On the other side, are Democrats trying to work with Republicans? Are there concessions on the table from your end?
Welch: There's absolutely efforts on my part, I'll speak for myself. To work with Republicans, I sent a text and spoke on the floor to the chair of the Finance Committee from Idaho, Sen. Crapo, and also to Sen. Wyden, our ranking member. I said, "Look, why don't you two designate a couple of Republicans and a couple of Democrats to sit down and get concrete and specific." Just this morning in the Judiciary Committee, I spoke to Sen. Hawley, who shares my concern about what happens to people in Missouri if these premium tax credits expire.
There's a lot of interest among individual Republican senators, but what Sen. Crapo basically indicated was, until they got the heads up from President Trump, they wouldn't be in a position to have these discussions. And frankly, that's very disappointing, because we as senators have independent responsibility to act to try to help the folks we represent, and whether it was President Biden, if he told us not to negotiate, I would disregard that if it meant that. That meant I couldn't help Vermonters.
My view here is that we should together solve a problem that actually affects red states and blue states. This health care is brutal for folks if they lose their health care. Yesterday, I was in Vermont with some Vermonters. A woman who has a food service business, she's got two kids and a husband, her health care premiums will increase by like 300 percent, and she said something that was very poignant to me. She said, "You know, I'm a mother, it would be totally irresponsible for me not to have insurance in case my kids get sick." But she says, with my income, it may be totally impossible for me to have health care. And you know what? It's on the United States Senate to not put her in that position.
Lefrak: Yesterday, President Trump said he was going to fire federal workers en masse if this shutdown continues. There are about 6,000 federal employees in Vermont who might be worried right now. Does that change your calculus at all?
Welch: It's illegal. I mean, the president does threaten to do things that are illegal, but we had a very careful briefing before we went into this and the question was, does a president have more authority to fire people and shut down versus in a when governments open? The answer to that very clearly was no. Now, that does not mean that Trump won't act in that illegal way, because he does do that. But there's no legal authority for him to fire people just because we're in a shutdown status. There can be furloughs, and of course, we do have a statute, because that's really inconvenient for folks paycheck to paycheck. If your paychecks stop showing up, that's really, really hard. And I get that. But the statute does guarantee that if there's a delay and you're getting paid, you're going to get paid when the shutdown ends.
Lefrak: Thank you to Jennifer in Winooski for sending us a question via email about that. Senator, I want to ask you about something that the governor of Vermont, Phil Scott, said on Vermont Edition yesterday. He sent a letter at the end of September to Congressional leaders and urge Congress to rise above partisanship and pass a long term budget agreement, and if they couldn't do that, Gov. Scott thought Democrats should at least vote with Republicans to pass a funding extension. The governor is claiming that the Democratic party is leaning into partisanship and further dividing Vermonters. How do you respond to that?
Welch: There's an aspect of the what the governor is talking about that I identify with. Americans are really, really dismayed that we've gotten into a situation where things like a shutdown and things like refusing to pay our debt become tactics. There's been six shutdowns in the past 30 years, and it's an indication that the political system is not working. But you know, it goes back to what I was saying about the health care and the urgency of acting, because Vermont is going to be hammered. Vermont is going to be hammered if we don't have this resolved by Nov. 1.
What I find really sad is that the issue is so important to people. Whether you're in a red state or a blue state, the health care burdens on our families are enormous. What's so terrible about losing this is not just about those individual families in Vermont and all around the country. That means our hospitals are going to be under incredible financial duress, and they already are. We've got a lot of good community hospitals in Vermont. They can lose millions of dollars because all these folks who don't have healthcare. It doesn't guarantee they won't get sick and they'll show up, they'll get uncompensated care. Their budgets get really eviscerated. Then there's a cost shift so that our good employers in Vermont, who are trying to provide coverage for their workers, are going to see themselves getting hammered with higher premiums.
I really hate shutdowns, but I really am appalled at the idea that because Congress won't act, Vermonters and Americans are going to lose access to the health care that they depend on.
Today's show also included a conversation about the ongoing drought with organic farmers Margaret Loftus and Jesse Wilbur and director of forestry Oliver Pierson.
Broadcast live on Tuesday, October 7, 2025, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.
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