Every Vermont consumer and every Vermont business must live in a state of constant awareness that at any time, for any reason, Democrats will at least consider applying any old idea that had died in a previous legislative session to solve a new or unique problem from today.
Senator McCormack and other legislators may end up owing a public apology to Mr. Goldberg for attempting to trade on his good name and his complex functioning creations by equating their efforts with his successful ones.
This $5 billion cost to provide weatherization, heat pumps, and heat pump water heaters, will mostly be borne by low and moderate income Vermonters. The Affordable Heat act will be the largest and most expensive social program ever paid for by Vermonters.
The question now is whether or not the members of the Appropriations Committee — a money committee —will raise the critical questions about what financial impact this bill will do to people trying to survive Vermont winters.
Given how much high-minded rhetoric has been dedicated to “a just transition” away from fossil fuels, the committee’s failure to even consider reaching out to Vermont’s director of Racial Equity except as an afterthought was revealing.
It turns out the real long-term cost of the Affordable Heat Act, S.5, proposed by the Natural Resources and Energy Committee is $5 billion over a 5-year period as demonstrated in a detailed financial analysis by the Ethan Allen Institute.
“The entire bill calls horrifying brutality something nice. This bill is about so-called gender-affirming care — that is, chemical and physical castration and mutilation of children. It passed the House with 24 of 38 Republicans voting in favor of it.”
In this video, Gregory Thayer interviews Judy Taranovich, vice chair of the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association, and Manny Fletcher, president, about S.5.
The tide has turned to what is now a social welfare state, implementing similar programs that have been a failure in California, and closer to home, in Burlington.
The public health-freedom advocacy group Health Choice Vermont has highlighted five bills introduced at the Statehouse which all concern various aspects of healthcare rights.
Senate Bill 5, the Affordable Heating Act, was approved unanimously by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Friday morning. The bill is a reprise of the clean heat standard the Legislature passed last year only to be vetoed by Gov. Phil Scott.
Sen. Dick McCormack, D-Windsor, suggested that the committee consider scrapping the whole thing and simply enacting a carbon tax on fossil heating fuels and use the money to fund programs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.