BOSTON — Members of a U.S. Senate committee looking into the bankruptcy of Steward Health Care adopted two resolutions Thursday designed to hold CEO Ralph de la Torre in contempt — one for civil enforcement and another for criminal contempt — for not testifying before the panel.

The votes come after de la Torre refused to attend a committee hearing last week despite being issued a subpoena. Both resolutions will be sent to the full Senate for consideration.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said de la Torre’s decision to defy the subpoena gave the committee little choice but to seek contempt charges.

“Time after time he has arrogantly refused to appear,” Sanders said Thursday.

In a letter sent to the committee Wednesday, Alexander Merton, an attorney for de la Torre, said the committee’s request to have him testify would violate his Fifth Amendment rights.

The Constitution protects de la Torre from being compelled by the government to provide sworn testimony intended to frame him “as a criminal scapegoat for the systemic failures in Massachusetts’ health care system,” Merton wrote, adding that de la Torre would agree to testify at a later date.

“Our concerns that the Hearing would be used to ambush Dr. de la Torre in a pseudo-criminal proceeding were on full display last week, with the Committee soliciting testimony from witnesses calling Dr. de la Torre and Steward executives ‘health care terrorists’ and advocating for Dr. de la Torre’s imprisonment,” Merton wrote.

The resolution for civil enforcement of the subpoena instructs the Senate legal counsel to bring a lawsuit in the District Court for the District of Columbia to require de la Torre’s testimony before the committee.

The criminal contempt resolution would refer the matter to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to criminally prosecute de la Torre for failing to comply with the subpoena.

“Even though Dr. de la Torre may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Even though he may be able to own fancy yachts and private jets and luxurious accommodations around the world. Even though he may be able to afford some of the most expensive lawyers in America, Dr. de la Torre is not above the law,” Sanders said.

Texas-based Steward, which operates about 30 hospitals nationwide, filed for bankruptcy in May, citing billions in debt.

Steward has been working to sell a half-dozen hospitals in Massachusetts, but received inadequate bids for two other hospitals, Carney Hospital in Boston and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in the town of Ayer, both of which have closed as a result.

A federal bankruptcy court this month approved the sale of Steward’s other Massachusetts hospitals.

Operations of the company’s hospitals in the Mahoning Valley — Trumbull Regional Medical Center and Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital, both of which faced the possibility of closure — as well as 13 others elsewhere, have been taken over by interim operators through a global settlement in Steward’s Chapter 11 case.

At the same time, de la Torre has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars personally and bought a $40 million yacht and a $15 million luxury fishing boat, Sanders said.