Susan Collins Is Not Concerned. But Mainers should be.

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-07-24-susan-collins-is-not-concerned/



This week, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) inserted a $50 million line item into the Commerce, Science, and Justice fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill for University of Maine science and environmental infrastructure projects. And she continues to pick up the pieces following Gov. Janet Mills’s earlier confrontation with President Trump over transgender athletes. At the end of June, she announced the restoration of about $100 million in Department of Agriculture funding to the Maine university system, after federal officials snatched back that money, and she continues to labor over reversing other federal department funding pauses.

Being chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee carries those kinds of privileges. Collins, just like Robert Byrd, Ted Stevens, and others before her, is able to wield legendary powers on behalf of her home state, to the envy and consternation of other pols who would do the same thing if they had the opportunity. And yet, despite this power, Mainers can expect their fair share of pain ahead. With a single procedural yes vote, Collins paved the way for the dramatic shredding of the country’s social safety net, which will plunge tens of thousands of her own constituents in the poorest state in the Northeast into some very hard times. Never mind her performative no vote on final passage of the Trump administration’s signature domestic-policy mega-bill; she had sealed the fate of many Mainers already.

The Maine Center for Economic Policy finds that as a result of that mega-bill, up to 31,000 people in the state could lose SNAP benefits, another 170,000 will see cuts to the value of their food assistance, and up to 34,000 could lose Medicaid, due to new work requirements and other enrollment hurdles. Cuts to clean-energy tax credits will put up to 15,000 Maine jobs at risk. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of Maine income earners will get a tax cut of $34,000 on average.



This is not even the only bill where Collins opted for party loyalty over her constituents. As Puck News reported, Collins was planning to offer an amendment to the rescissions bill Republicans passed into law last week that would have preserved funding for global health programs and nearly all of the funding for public media. It had enough votes to pass, but pressure from conservative senators—with an appeal to party unity—led her to drop the amendment. As a result, not only will more desperately poor people abroad die of starvation, but public radio stations in rural areas like Maine will struggle to deliver critical news and information for their communities. There are other party-line votes sure to anger Collins’s constituents, like continuing to vote for anti-abortion judges. But as she makes life harder for Maine families, the question remains: Will she pay any price for this at the ballot box?

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