Augusta, Maine – In case you’ve missed it, the Portland Press Herald Editorial Board is calling on Susan Collins to go beyond “heartfelt displeasure” and use her power in the Senate to “turn the volume up to the max” on Republicans’ toxic budget bill. As the editorial board highlights, proposed cuts in the bill “will disproportionately hurt people on low and middle incomes, older people and people living in rural areas,” categories that “capture many of us who live in Maine.”

The editorial board’s publication comes as Mainers have been criticizing Susan Collins for failing to use her seniority in the Senate to protect Maine from the Trump administration’s disastrous cuts to federal funding and the GOP’s attempt to rip health care away from 51,000 Mainers.

Read more from the Portland Press Herald:

Budget megabill looks particularly bad for Maine | Editorial
By The Editorial Board
June 15, 2025

  • The “signature” undertakings of the “big, beautiful bill,” the looming federal budget reconciliation package sent to the U.S. Senate by the House, will disproportionately hurt people on low and middle incomes, older people and people living in rural areas.

  • Those categories capture many of us who live in Maine. It’s for that reason both our senators in D.C. must be absolute in their opposition to this legislation.

  • “We are preparing your tax cuts …” was the playful message on the White House website last week, complete with a self-enrichment progress bar illuminated part of the way in green. There was no mention of the fact that the tax cuts outlined by this sprawling bill will need to be offset by absolutely lacerating cuts to essential programs: to health care and food assistance; to the National Park Service [...] to research into disease and other investment in public health [...]and much more.

  • Not only do our senators need to stay the course on this dogged interrogation, on this opposition, they need to deepen it and to [...] turn the volume up to the max. These funding cuts’ savings register as meaningless to the nauseating deficit (any remote reference to which was also conspicuous in its absence at whitehouse.gov) as they will be devastating to the vulnerable people and communities affected by them.

  • Analysis released last Thursday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office put it plainly: “The changes would not be evenly distributed among households. The agency estimates that in general, resources would decrease for households toward the bottom of the income distribution, whereas resources would increase for households in the middle and top.”

  • Taking action that drives up the national debt by trillions of dollars will, by most economists’ accounts, have severe repercussions: pushing up interest rates, hampering businesses and gumming up chances for growth generally. This wildly misguided package stands to both take from Maine and to create conditions that prevent her from taking anything for herself.

See more: ICYMI: Mainers Call Out Collins for Failing to Use Her Seniority to Protect Maine; ICYMI: Susan Collins-Backed Medicaid Cuts Would Hurt Maine’s Fishermen

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