Sanders lines up a return to the HELP Committee gavel
The Dirksen Senate Office Building, home of the HELP Committee hearing room. Photo: USCapitol, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
When the new Congress convenes in January, Bernie Sanders is likely to get his gavel back.
Last week’s election gave Democrats control of both chambers. The Associated Press projected as of Friday that Democrats would hold at least 54 Senate seats and 253 House seats, with some races still uncalled. Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, told VTDigger he intends to reclaim the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which he led two years ago and where he now serves as ranking member, VTDigger reported.
HELP is one of the Senate’s busiest committees. It writes or reviews much of the law on health insurance, drug prices, public health, schools and colleges, workplace safety, unions and pensions. Its chair controls the agenda, decides which bills get hearings and has wide room to call executives and officials to testify.
Sanders laid out what he’d do with it.
Undo the Medicaid cuts. He wants to roll back provisions in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that are expected to push millions of people off Medicaid.
Bring back the ACA subsidies. The enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits lapsed after Congress let them expire last year. Vermonters shopping on Vermont Health Connect are seeing the result now, with higher net premiums for many households that used to qualify for more help; open enrollment runs through Dec. 15 (our guide is here).
Push toward Medicare for All. Sanders said he wants the committee to “be very aggressive about moving toward ‘Medicare for All.'” “We’re going to move to do what every other major country does: guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right,” he said.
Labor and wages. He wants another run at the PRO Act, which would make it easier for workers to unionize and bargain; it passed the House in 2020 and 2021 but stalled in the Senate. He also wants a $20 federal minimum wage, up from $7.25, and higher taxes on billionaires to pay for low- or no-cost child care and early education.
Most of that list would need 60 votes to get past a filibuster, or a budget maneuver, and a president willing to sign it. Trump still holds the veto pen until January 2029. What a chair can do without either is hold hearings, issue reports and force a public argument, which Sanders did often the last time he ran the committee, including high-profile hearings with drug and corporate executives.
The rest of the delegation
Vermont’s other two members of Congress will also have more say in a Democratic majority, and they’ve staked out somewhat different priorities.
Rep. Becca Balint wants to build on the bipartisan housing law Congress passed earlier this year without Trump’s signature, which streamlined environmental reviews for projects, loosened rules on manufactured homes, expanded access to small-dollar mortgages and limited how many homes a private equity firm can own. She wants more housing changes aimed at rural places like Vermont, and action on corporate consolidation in industries from fertilizer and groceries to concert ticketing and fire truck manufacturing. “It’s a target-rich environment. We have to be disciplined,” she said.
Sen. Peter Welch struck a more cautious note on VTDigger’s “Vermont Conversation” podcast, saying the vote “was not a big embrace of Democrats” and that the party has “an opportunity to earn their trust.” He named repealing Trump’s tariffs on Canada and other countries as a top priority, along with curbing the administration’s immigration enforcement tactics. He said there will be corruption investigations, but warned against “vengeance and payback.”
Sanders put the balance this way: Congress has to hold Trump accountable “period,” he said, but “if that’s all that we do, and we ignore the pain and anxiety that working families are experiencing all over this country, we will be a failed Congress.”
Committee assignments and chairs are set by each party’s caucus after the new Congress is seated. Sanders, who turned 85 in September, is in the second year of his fourth Senate term.
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