WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s disregard for Congress and its power of the purse is putting senior Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in an awkward spot as she heads towards a crucial reelection battle next year.
As chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Collins should have tremendous influence over legislation allocating federal funding to various government programs and getting them to the Senate floor, an argument she made repeatedly during her 2020 Senate campaign. Doing so requires bipartisan agreement in the Senate, where 60 votes are necessary to overcome a filibuster.
Yet the White House made clear it has little respect for the appropriations process or bipartisan input in general. The administration has frozen billions of dollars in funding Congress passed earlier this year, shuttered federal agencies without congressional approval, and passed partisan rescissions clawing back spending previously approved on a bipartisan basis — essentially making Collins’ job a lot less influential.
Collins’ objections to that approach have largely been ignored, however, and the Trump administration is preparing even more rescissions that could further poison the appropriations process. How the senator handles the situation could determine whether the government plunges into a shutdown and could potentially have ramifications for her bid for a sixth term next year in Maine, where polls show her standing has suffered in recent months.
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When asked this week how she felt about the White House undermining bipartisan efforts to pass spending bills, Collins put a positive spin on things.
“We’re on track on the appropriations process. We’re actually ahead of where we were last year at this time,” Collins told HuffPost.
That’s a pretty low bar. The Senate is on the verge of passing its first spending bill this year — a largely uncontroversial pot of money dealing with military construction projects and veterans’ affairs. It won’t take up the 11 additional, tougher-to-pass bills until September, after the August recess, giving lawmakers just a few weeks to keep the government open before a Sept. 30 deadline.
Republicans in the House, meanwhile, are pushing for even more draconian spending cuts that Democrats have already called a nonstarter. That lawmakers may have to pass another continuing resolution, or “CR” — essentially kicking the can down the road by funding the government at last year’s levels — is virtually a guaranteed conclusion at this point.
Democratic senators — haunted by their decision to cave to the GOP on government funding earlier this year — are still struggling to align on strategy for the next shutdown fight. This week, they voted to advance spending on military construction projects and veterans affairs. But they’re warning that will change if the White House pushes for another rescissions package, which they used to cut funding for PBS, NPR and foreign aid programs by majority vote earlier this month.
All of which is complicating Collins’ role as chair of the appropriations committee. Last week, the Maine Republican opposed Trump’s rescissions bill — but the measure passed anyway after a tiebreaking vote from Vice President JD Vance.
Collins managed to succeed in removing $400 million in cuts to PEPFAR, the George W. Bush-era program focused on fighting AIDS, from the bill. But she decided against pursuing a separate effort to reduce cuts to funds for public broadcasting. Had she done so, the amendment likely would have been adopted, threatening to scuttle the bill’s passage since conservatives in the House wanted deeper cuts. Democrats later put up the same amendment for a vote, but Republicans rejected it.
An aide to the senator told HuffPost that, had the amendment succeeded, the bill “could have ended up with the original rescissions package that included the PEPFAR cuts she had successfully advocated to be removed.”
The Trump administration, meanwhile, is threatening big Collins priorities, further undermining her gavel. The White House froze and sought to eliminate federal funding for programs critical for Mainers like Head Start and LIHEAP. If enacted, the cuts would gut early education for the nation’s neediest children and child care for their families, as well as the ability of millions of low-income families to heat and cool their homes. The White House also tried to freeze Title IX funding in Maine in retaliation to the state’s policies regarding transgender athletes in schools but was rebuffed in court.
Republican senators defended Collins’ approach, praising her for fostering bipartisan consensus amid White House moves they readily acknowledge have unfairly antagonized Democrats.
“It’s a very delicate balance,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said. “Right now, she’s got everybody playing ball and that is to everybody’s advantage to actually get the appropriations process working again. The challenge is that rescissions were tough because it’s something that Democrats looked at and said, you’re taking away things that we care about. She’s trying to regain their confidence.”
But Collins’ critics view the senator’s opposition to Trump’s agenda and her efforts to reverse some of the White House’s proposed cuts as fig leaves designed to further her moderate image ahead of what could be a tough reelection year.
They note she voted to advance Trump’s unpopular tax cuts law on the Senate floor and that she supported the confirmation of White House budget chief Russ Vought, who just last week suggested he doesn’t need Congress or the Constitution to force through massive cuts to federal spending, a view that Collins called “baffling.”
“We will make sure Mainers know it’s not an accident that Susan Collins is failing to stop the toxic GOP agenda; it’s a carefully orchestrated political ploy to keep her seat while cutting Medicaid and delivering tax giveaways to billionaires,” Tommy Garcia, a spokesman for the Maine Democratic Party, said in a statement. “At the end of the day, Donald Trump and Washington Republicans know Susan Collins will have their back.”
No major Democratic candidate has yet emerged to challenge Collins for her seat next year, even though polling is showing her approval levels at record lows. Democrats are hoping that Gov. Janet Mills (D) will still enter the race. The 77-year-old governor hasn’t officially ruled out a run, but hasn’t exactly expressed interest in one either.
Yet despite an administration bent on thumbing its finger at a compliant Congress at every turn, Collins is still holding out hope that bipartisanship can win the day.
“The appropriations process is the key way that Congress carries out this significant constitutional responsibility. We must not abdicate our constitutional responsibility for the purse,” she said in a speech on Tuesday.
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the heft of the PEPFAR cuts that Collins helped remove from Trump’s rescissions bill. The cuts would have amounted to $400 million.