Balint reflects problems with Democrats

To the Editor:
US Congresswoman Becca Balint served in the Vermont Senate from 2015 to 2022. During her tenure, the state budget increased from $5.1 billion to $7.71 billion.
Becca’s voting record can be found at https://www.ethanallen.org/bbalint. I searched and did not find one instance where she voted against a tax increase for Vermonters.
Her voting record is almost a mirror image of her former progressive colleagues, many of whom still serve in the legislature and senate. By a number of measurable metrics, including health care, crime, homelessness, academic proficiency in public education, drug addiction, and economic opportunity, Vermont has declined since her rise to power. In 2015, she served on the Senate Education Committee, where she was a strong advocate of Act 46. She even voted to lift the spending caps on the act. Act 46 consolidated and centralized public education governance with promises of equity and cost savings. What we got instead was rural schools closing, higher taxes, and less local control. Equity was delivered in the form of students being nearly equal in their inability to read, write, and understand arithmetic.
Becca Balint’s adherence to high taxation and spending on failed programs with no accountability has been devastating for our young people, the working class, senior citizens, and small businesses. Becca spends a lot of time and energy focusing on selective outrage outside of Vermont. Meanwhile, the forgotten men, women, and families of Vermont struggle to survive the outcomes that she and her progressive colleagues have successfully advocated for years.
Since Becca Balint’s departure from the Vermont Senate and her election to the US House of Representatives, her ideological allies in the Vermont General Assembly have worked feverishly to continue and expand her legacy. The current state budget is $9.38 billion. Clearly, the extraction of more tax dollars from Vermonters by Balint Democrats is creating more problems than it is solving.
The last year Republicans held majorities in both the Vermont House and Senate was 1986 — 40 years ago. I have listened to members of Vermont’s Democratic Party majority cast blame and aspersions my entire adult life, insisting that all the problems in our state are caused by those terrible Republicans. This vilification has won Vermont Democrats decades of elections, but at the expense of economic stability and prosperity in our state. It is long past time for a real course correction — for a future every Vermonter can be hopeful about.
Stuart Lindberg
Cavendish