NEW: The Case Against Susan Collins [The Bulwark]

The Bulwark: “Collins essentially concedes that the pain inflicted by her own party will go on”

The Bulwark: “This is a classic Collins move: bragging about bringing home a slab of bacon, when you gave away the rest of the pig”

A scathing new piece in The Bulwark is exposing Susan Collins’ “bleak pitch” to Maine – that “only Susan Collins […] can reduce your suffering” from the pain “inflicted by her own party.” From health care to immigration to tariffs to energy, Collins makes the same “twisted argument” – which includes cutting “net loss” deals for Maine that make “no difference” – then “tak[ing] credit” for “supposedly getting things done.” 

Collins refuses “to do anything that endangers [her] power by exceeding [her] party’s tolerance of dissent” – but time and time again, “the play-nice approach [has] failed.” Now – with just under two weeks to go until election day, her “abdication” is in the spotlight, and her charade may just be up. 

See for yourself: 

The Bulwark: The Case Against Susan Collins

• To Trump voters, [Susan Collins’] message is that she’ll stand up to the left. To everyone else, her message is: If you’re unhappy with Trump and the GOP, only Susan Collins—by being powerful, and being a Republican—can reduce your suffering.
• It’s a bleak pitch. Collins essentially concedes that the pain inflicted by her own party will go on, and that all she can do is lessen it. The question her candidacy presents to Mainers is whether they’ll settle for that grim bargain, or whether they’ll give her seat to a party that will take on Trump for real.
• That’s how Collins thinks: […] it’s unwise to do anything that endangers your power by exceeding your party’s tolerance of dissent.
• She says her strategy of backing the GOP, accumulating clout, cultivating good relations with the Trump administration, and cutting deals has paid off for Maine. Has it?
• Let’s look at four case studies.
• 1. Health care: Last year, on a crucial procedural vote, Collins voted to advance Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act to the Senate floor. 
• Collins’s transaction was a net loss for Maine and for rural America. Relying on figures from the Congressional Budget Office, KFF, an independent research organization, projected that over ten years, the Republican bill would cut federal Medicaid outlays by $911 billion. The loss to rural areas would be $137 billion.
• 2. Immigration enforcement: In January, after federal immigration agents gunned down two Americans in Minneapolis, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defiantly lied about the shootings. Collins defended Noem, arguing that the secretary was curtailing enforcement in Maine and giving the senator good access to DHS leadership. “I’m glad that I have the ability to call her up and talk to her,” said Collins. “So no, I am not calling for her resignation.”
• The shootings prompted a huge fight in Congress. In June, when the Senate considered a Republican bill to spend $70 billion on immigration enforcement, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) proposed an amendment to require agents to wear body cameras. Collins joined her Republican colleagues to kill the amendment. Instead, she and her colleagues approved $20 million—less than 7 percent of what Padilla was proposing—to fund, but not require, body cameras.
• Then, in July, ICE agents needlessly killed two more people, one in Texas and another in Maine. Neither victim was a law-enforcement target, and none of the agents were wearing cameras. Collins spoke to the new DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin, and announced that after their conversation, he had agreed to “cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”
• This was another typical Collins pitch: By playing nice with the administration, she was supposedly getting things done. But hours later, in a Truth Social post, Trump rejected the change and declared that vehicle stops would continue. The play-nice approach had failed.
• This, too, is a familiar Collins pose. Her intervention made no difference to the pace or extent of camera distribution.
• 3. Tariffs: In April, when [Commerce Secretary Howard] Lutnick came before the subcommittee, Collins didn’t even mention tariffs. “Welcome, Secretary Lutnick,” she began […] She proceeded to ask him about non-tariff regulations.
• Since then, Collins has continued to lobby Greer, Lutnick, and Vice President JD Vance […] On September 8, she declared victory. “Senator Collins Announces Road Salt, Cement Exempt from U.S. Tariffs,” read her press release. 
• Even with the exemptions, the remaining tariffs are hurting Maine. The Maine Center for Economic Policy, a progressive research outfit, points out that the tariff war with Canada is hitting other local industries such as lumber, tourism, and manufacturing. In the October 6 Senate debate, when Collins bragged about winning the carveout for road salt, Jackson asked, “What about everything else? I mean, we can’t eat road salt.”
• Collins’s answer is that Mainers should be glad she’s mitigating the pain that Trump, Greer, and Lutnick are inflicting. 
• 4. Energy prices: In the first two months of the Iran war, the Senate voted five times on resolutions to “remove the United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Iran.” All five times, Collins voted with her party to kill these resolutions. 
• When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came before Collins’s committee on July 21 to request additional funding, she had her chance to stop the games and assert congressional control of the war. Instead, she surrendered. In her opening statement, she urged her colleagues to put aside their differences over Iran and cough up the money Hegseth wanted. Rather than question him about the war and its cost overruns, she set him up to make his case.
• Collins’s abdication left her colleagues with the job of interrogating Hegseth and challenging the rationale for the war. Some brought up the spike in gas prices; others asked about the money Trump was sinking into Iran instead of Ukraine.
• As the war dragged on, energy prices soared. By October, the cost of heating oil in Maine was up 80 percent from the previous year. On October 2, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, sent a letter to the state’s congressional delegation pleading for more money for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) so people wouldn’t freeze. Democratic senators demanded additional LIHEAP funding and called for other measures to access alternative energy supplies.
• Collins issued no such demands. Instead, on October 9, she announced, “After my conversations with the HHS Secretary and OMB Director this week, more than $38 million in federal home heating assistance will be released to help Maine families.”
• That sounded like additional money. It wasn’t. It was the same allotment Maine was already scheduled to get under LIHEAP. In fact, it was less money than Maine had gotten the previous year, even though the cost of heating, thanks to the war, was far higher. The administration was just releasing the money a few weeks early.This means that as the upcoming winter wears on, recipients won’t be any better off. They might just run out of money sooner as high heating costs exhaust the subsidies. But the early delivery has likely made a difference for at least one person: It has arrived before Collins faces voters on November 3.
• AGAIN AND AGAIN, Collins comes back to the same twisted argument: Only she can limit the damage her party is doing. The Medicaid cuts are bad, and she helped get them through the Senate, but she partially atoned by setting up the rural health fund. The tariffs are bad, but she’s working with Trump’s tariff capos to make them slightly less bad. The ICE shootings are bad, and she defends the agency’s leaders, but she got body cameras to Maine two weeks before other states got them. The war is bad, and she’s not stopping it or getting more money for heating oil, but she’s getting the existing money to Maine before Election Day.
• Collins is right about one thing: Having broken her pledge to serve only two terms in the Senate, she has stuck around long enough to become chair of Appropriations. It’s among the most consequential posts in Congress. It gives her tremendous power.
• What she won’t do is use her power as chair to take on the war or the tariffs.
• Nor will she defy her party on crucial votes where her defection would sink key Republican legislation.
• Nor will she draw a firm line, as Cheney did, against collaboration with Trump.
• Nor will she leave the Republican caucus and join Sen. King as an independent.
• She thinks the voters of Maine should be grateful for what she’s done. She thinks it’s enough. But after thirty years, they might decide that what they’ve had enough of is her.