Peter Welch

U.S. Rep. Peter Welch: Campaign PhotoFor the second time this week, Vermont's sole U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Hartland) considered a version of the financial bailout package. This time he voted for the legislation which ultimately passed in the House of Representatives by 263-171 votes.

U.S. Rep. Peter Welch: Campaign PhotoVermont's only U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Hartland) voted Monday to reject the proposed $700 billion "bailout bill," which ultimately failed 205-228, with one representative abstaining.

After over three hours of impassioned debate, Congress moved to vote on the proposed legislation, but it did not receive the support it needed, falling just a few votes shy of the number needed to pass with a simple majority.

As the weather turns colder and summer turns into fall, Vermont received Wednesday more than $2.4 million in additional federal aid for home heating relief for the coming winter months.

President Bush Wednesday ordered Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt to release the remaining reserve funds from the Low Income Heating Energy Assistance Program-approximately $120 million-as requested by U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Middlesex) and supported by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Burlington) and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Hartland).

"Soaring home heating costs already are a clear and present threat facing thousands of Vermont households," Leahy said in a statement. "These funds were doing no good sitting in an agency's vault. Congress appropriated these funds for times like these."

Fewer than one in 10 Vermonters cast a ballot in this year's statewide primary election, making this year the worst turnout of any primary election this decade.

On Tuesday, the Elections and Campaign Finance division of Vermont's State Department published its report on this year's voter turnout as well as complete election results. Only 36,716 people participated in last week's election, out of a possible 431,631 registered voters -- just 8.5 percent, far less than half of about 87,000 Vermonters who made it to the polls in 2006.

Officials anticipated a low voter turnout this year, as Secretary of State Deb Markowitz told PolitickerVT.com last week that this year was a sleepy year for elections, especially since the only two competitive statewide races were the Democratic race for U.S. representative and for lieutenant governor.

Peter Welch appears to have easily secured the Democratic nomination for Vermont's only seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, in one of the two competitive statewide primaries this year.

The Associated Press projected Welch's win with 12 percent of the total vote counted. Welch won nearly 90 percent of votes cast and his challenger, Craig Hill, received just over 10 percent.

Welch, a resident of Windsor, has just finished serving his freshman term in Congress. In late July, Hill announced that he would challenge the incumbent. On his Web site, Hill, who lives in Montpelier, describes himself as "The only candidate for federal office whose campaign exposes visual evidence disproving the official conspiracy theory of 9/11."

The governor had a bad week after embarassing internal administration emails were released. And Rutland got some relatively good budget news. They're among this week's Winners & Losers. | CLICK HERE

U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Burlington) hopped on the LINK Express bus from Burlington to Montpelier Tuesday afternoon to discuss with passengers about public transit operations in Vermont, The Burlington Free Press is reporting.

Vermont's at-large Democratic U.S. Rep. Peter Welch Thursday wrote a letter to the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service demanding answers to a Wall Street Journal report revealing that some companies used employee pension plans to provide supplemental executive benefits.

Welch asked in his letter that Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson and IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman respond to his questions by no later than Friday, August 22, so that he "will have the information necessary to prepare a legislative response to this issue."