Bernie Buzz

If you have seen or read the news lately, you have undoubtedly heard that the government shut down last night. It can be hard to cut through all the noise of cable news and social media and really understand what is going on in our nation’s capital. Let me tell you more about what is happening, and what I believe we should be doing to fund the government and improve the lives of Vermonters and people throughout the country.

On Tuesday night, after ABC reconsidered its decision to remove Kimmel from the air, millions of Americans tuned in to watch his return to late-night television. His opening monologue has already been viewed over 26 million times. But Vermonters were denied the chance to see it when it originally aired. Nexstar Media Group, which owns ABC affiliate WVNY in Vermont and some 200 stations around the country, refused to broadcast it.

On July 31, Dr. Susan Monarez was sworn in as our nation’s first Senate-confirmed director of the CDC. At her swearing-in ceremony, Secretary Kennedy called Dr. Monarez “a public health expert with unimpeachable scientific credentials.” Less than a month later, on August 27, Dr. Monarez was fired because she refused to rubber stamp Secretary Kennedy’s dangerous agenda to substantially limit the use of safe and effective vaccines. In my view, that action would endanger the lives of the American people and people throughout the world.

I wanted to share with you a speech I gave today on the floor of the Senate regarding the possibility of a government shutdown.

If politicians love America, they must love America’s children and invest in their future. In the richest country in the history of the world, we cannot tolerate having the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth. Today, 14 million kids don’t have enough to eat. More than 4 million kids do not have health insurance and millions more are underinsured. Hundreds of thousands of children are homeless each year. That is an outrage.

A free and democratic society, which is what America is supposed to be about, depends upon the basic premise that people can speak out, organize and take part in public life without fear — without worrying that they might be killed, injured or humiliated for expressing their political views. In fact, that is the essence of what freedom is about and what democracy is about.