This was the happy scene yesterday as Senate Appropriations Committee chair Jane Kitchel peremptorily ended discussion on the housing portion of the FY2024 budget, which makes no provision for extending the motel voucher program that currently shelters 80% of Vermont’s unhoused. Kitchel herself seems excited; the rest of them look like they’d rather be anywhere else.

This morning saw a much more celebratory occasion, as the House quickly dispatched Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of S.5, the Affordable Heat Act. And much as I hate to rain on the majority Democrats’ victory parade, I have to wonder why they couldn’t spare just a tiny bit of their abundant political capital to avoid the imminently avoidable humanitarian crisis that will unfold if the voucher program ends on schedule.

The 107-42 override vote in the House was an impressive display of political power. The Democrats easily walked over a governor who, at last check, enjoyed a 78% approval rating among the voters.

And yet, on the voucher issue, legislative Democrats made common cause with the Scott administration and threw 1,800 of our most vulnerable households under the bus. It’s a point of comparison that cannot be ignored.

For the diminished forces of conservatism, S.5 was Public Enemy Number One. A huge amount of the admittedly cheap real estate on True North Reports and Vermont Daily Chronicle has been devoted to the evils of the Act. The Vermont Republican Party’s messaging machine, a.k.a. party chair Paul Dame, hammered on the Act incessantly. Conservative inboxes were peppered with pleas to Contact Your Lawmakers. In the days leading up to the Senate’s override vote, moderate Democratic Sen. Dick Sears was specifically targeted as the much-sought-after 11th vote to uphold the governor.

And yet, the supermajorities prevailed.

But still, the Democratic/Progressive steamroller remains parked by the side of the road on the housing issue.

Look, the Affordable Heat Act is a great step toward doing our part on climate change. Not perfect, but by the messy standards of big-issue lawmaking it’s a huge positive. Climate change is the great existential issue of our time.

But the motel voucher program is the great existential issue of this moment, and the Democrats just can’t muscle up to meet the challenge.

The party issued a thoroughly justified press release boasting of the override. “‘I’m so proud of our legislators for protecting Vermonters from the harms of climate change,” said party Chair David Glidden.

Great. Now let’s run that sentence back with a small change at the end. And let’s hope for a press release in the near future in which Glidden justifiably boasts that “I’m so proud of our legislators for protecting Vermonters from the harms of a plague of homelessness.”

That would truly be a happy occasion. And it’s well within the political capabilities of the majority Democrats. How about it, folks?