“I am American first”

Rep. Becca Balint addresses Vermont business leaders on January 28,2025 (audio & transcript)

This morning, as my husband brought up the freshly brewed coffee to get us started on the day, he asked me if I’d read the news yet. I hadn’t event finished my Wordle game, so he informed me: the Trump administration imposed a federal funding freeze and called for all agencies to audit if the funds were to be spent for any of the activities Trump no longer deems worthy. We had been on high alert for something of this nature, but didn’t expect it to occur within the fortnight of his assuming office.

I work with nonprofits in Vermont and many of them rely on direct federal grants, contracts, or federal funds via an intermediary agency. This would definitely be a blow to the free clinic my husband runs, and to the work many of my colleagues are engaged in. Apparently all the nonprofit forums were a confusing chaos of outrage, dismay, confusion, and panic.

I however had a planned escape from the discourse, as I was attending the Vermont Economic Development conference put on by the Vermont Chamber of Commerce. I came away today with lots to chew on. But I want to post this today: the transcript of Rep. Becca Balint’s address to the conferencees. For those who may need a dose of reality and a call to action at this time, I hope this provides some comfort.

I didn’t think to start recording until she’d finished her opener about how she represents everyone, regardless of status or affiliation. But I couldn’t take notes fast enough. What I was able to record and transcribe is pasted below.

“… projects related to the Infrastructure Reduction Act have all been frozen, have been stopped. And we are getting a lot of incoming from our, to our office of course, people are very confused about what this will mean. I was just meeting with the interim provost at UVM, looking at how this is going to impact their research, how it's going to impact their employees because they're not going to have that money to pay people. And so we are weakened and there's still a lot of information that we need desperately from this administration that we're not getting. And so that concerns me because we have real issues in Vermont that you all know about, which I'm sure you have met about in smaller groups here at this conference. We have a housing crisis.

“We have an insurance and a healthcare crisis. You know that we are short workers from one end of the state to another in every industry. And I want to make sure that my time and energy is focused on those things that will materially make life better, not just for Vermonters, not just for all of you who run businesses and organizations, but that will collectively improve our economy.

“So I'm very concerned about some of the sweeping decisions that have been made this week that will impact us. Vermont is a small state. You know that. We are dependent in so many ways on federal dollars for all kinds of things. And so it's going to be important for all of us in this room to rise above politics. And I mean that most sincerely. When I show up into the Budget Committee, when I show up in the Judiciary Committee, I am American first.

“I'm a Vermonter. I am trying to find people to partner with to get work done on housing, to get work done on the mental health crisis. But we all have to lend our voices this.

“It is not good governance to decide to freeze all federal dollars going to research institutes to projects that we have already appropriated the money to. Right? We have lanes. We have three branches of government.

“It's critically important that when we as members of Congress hold the purse strings, we appropriate money to projects for infrastructure projects, to science projects, that that money goes to where it's supposed to get to. Okay? So again, I'm here for you. I'm here for Vermonters. Regardless of party, I want government to work. That is my guiding star because when it doesn't, we as citizens of very small state, we suffer in some ways more immediately and more directly than folks from bigger states who can absorb some of those hits.

“So in my first two years, I put forward a massive housing bill. I know that this is holding us back. I hear this from employers everywhere I go. It’s not just here in Burlington. I can tell you it's Windham County.

“It's Bennington County. It is all over. We need a massive investment in housing. We can't do it alone. I know there are people in this room right now who are working on that in earnest and that is something that has been important to me in all of my work in the legislature. It continues to be my number one issue in Congress is making sure I do everything I can to get more housing built. I don't want people not to come to Vermont for jobs because there's no housing.

“And I have heard that from employers in just about every sector. You're losing good people because there's nowhere for them to live. So housing, huge issue. Certainly, health care. We saw the election here in Vermont. We know a lot of that turned on affordability issues, issues related to taxes. And we know those tax increases are often related to health insurance costs.

“That's a huge driver for us. Okay? It’s acute here in Vermont, but it's not unique to us. So how do I find other members of Congress to partner with to work on this issue? And of course, the workforce. Now, I'm sure as I look out here, there are hundreds of you, but ask people your opinion on what should happen on immigration and migrant work.

“There would be dozens and dozens of different answers. So again, I'm going to park the political aside. Okay? I know right now, we have migrant workers working on our farms that are essentially critical to our agricultural economy that are now afraid to leave the farms. We are hearing that. We know from my colleagues in Bakersfield, California, that oranges are not being picked right now. The first day of an ICE raid in Bakersfield, 25% of the workforce showed up to pick oranges the next day. 75%.

“75% did not show up. So these policies and rhetoric has material consequences. We have to get to immigration policy that,yes, secures the border, keeps us safe, gives people a pathway to work here or pathway to citizenship. We need to do all of those things. But I need you to understand that if we don't bring down the rhetoric around these issues and get to the hard work of doing it, we are not going to have the workforce that we need. Period.

“We're not. So as much as I am trying to find those partners on the other side of the aisle, as much as I am trying to figure out a way to talk about these issues with some common sense and some dignity, I need all of us to do that. Congress should have solved this problem decades ago.

“It's outrageous that it didn't happen. But I will tell you there are no easy answers. It's going to be complicated. It's going to take a significant amount of time. of not just time and energy of thought, but investments in order to fix the broken immigration system.

“Bringing it back home or directly to Vermont, I know that there are people in this room that are very concerned about what the impact will be on HB1 visas, HB2 visas, and folks who are here in Vermont working as migrant labor again that are critically important to our economy who are not sure where they go from here. Okay? So we can't stick our heads in the sand and think it's some other people that are going to have to deal with this. We're going to have to deal with this. And I want you to know, I am somebody who literally thinks ever day, what can I do,even if it is a small incremental step in committee or with the administration, whatever it is, to make it better? Because what is happening right now is not working.

“I think we can all agree on that. So,some of the issues, some of the other issues which I touched on, but I just want to make explicit because I know they're impacting your workforce and they may be impacting you. We are in the midst of a crisis of mental health, of disconnection and loneliness. It's impacting your bottom line if you run a business, if you run an organization. It was such an extreme issue that our past surgeon general pointed out the extent to which this is impacting the economy and our physical health. It's akin to smoking several packs a day.

“It's the impact that loneliness has on all of us. I always try to bring it up because it is a cost driver that a lot of people don't know how to talk about. And I'm trying to figure out how I can in my position in Congress, again, bring this out of the shadows so we can talk more honestly and openly about this and how it's impacting our economy. I have a seriousness of purpose in the work that I do and I'm never going to sugarcoat anything when I come back to Vermont. What I have seen in the last week is alarming.

“I'm just going to tell you a personal story that has been riding me all week so that you understand what I'm talking about here. You may have heard that the president pardoned 1,500 people that were involved in the story of the Capitol. Now, hundreds of those people had already served their time. Many of them were not violent. Perhaps they carried out some vandalism at the Capitol or maybe they were just cited for trespassing.

“Included in those 500 were somewhere between five and 600 violent felons. I have gotten to know a lot of the Capitol police in the last two years and I can tell you the day that that pardon went down, they were beside themselves. Now, while I was dealing with their feelings about it and a feeling of betrayal, I started to notice something. The leader of the proud boys, folks from the oath keepers, they were literally walking the halls of Congress the next day. They were up in the balcony in the house staring now to intimidate us. They were going from office to office.

“They were holding court in the cafes beneath the Capitol. I tell you this because I want to be really clear. This is not normal. We can disagree on policy. We can disagree as Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, liberals, but this, this is not normal. And I need people of conscience, regardless of political party, to be more outspoken about this. Because I can't do my job to the best of my ability representing all of you if I am afraid to walk into the House chamber. That's the reality. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Now, I am bringing an energy into this room this morning that I don't often bring because I am a joyful person.

“I am somebody who sees the light in everything and sees the light in everyone, honestly. But I thought very carefully about what I wanted the message to be. We have to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law and within that we can do our work.

“But I am not going to compromise on that. Now, in closing, I want to be really clear with you. I believe in Vermont and Vermonters. I believe in the grit and determination that people have, the ingenuity. I'm constantly inspired when I come back every single weekend I fly back to Vermont to be here, yes, with my family, to be with all of you and hear what is exciting you. What are you working on? What can we collaborate on?

“I feel so hopeful about Vermont and what we can do if we can truly rise above not just a partisan divide but a demonization of each other. It's not serving us. It's not serving us.

“I don't care what political party you are, it's not serving us. So I want to tell you something. This is the honor of my life to be able to serve Vermont. And every single day when I walk into the Capitol building, I think there's only one of me in Congress, only one member from the House of Representatives. And that's why it’s critically important that I represent all of you, regardless of party. Thank you.”

The conference lunch. I regret not getting a second slice of chocolate cake before it was put away.

[Note: this AI-powered transcription created using Revoldiv. I did a cursory review and found it very, very accurate. The audio was recorded on my iPhone.]