With just one vote, Maine lost $675 million on her watch
By Mark Shaffer | MECEP ActionOver 10 years, Senator Collins brought Maine $3.45 billion. Her vote to advance Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) will cost Maine $4.125 billion.
Net: Maine is $675 million worse off and that’s before counting higher energy bills, rising insurance premiums, and tariff costs associated with other Trump administration policies.
The four things to know:
- Every senator brings home federal money. That’s the baseline job, not a special achievement. Maine has two senators and two representatives doing it no matter who holds the seat.
- Her vote cost Maine. Senator Collins cast the decisive vote to advance Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) that gave over $1 trillion in tax cuts to the ultra-rich and costs Maine more than $4 billion in cuts to health care, nutrition assistance, and clean energy investments over the next 10 years.
- She can’t have it both ways. Senator Collins disavows responsibility for OBBB because of her final “no” vote. Casting a key vote to keep the proposal moving and then opposing it only once her vote no longer matters isn’t making Maine better off. It’s political cover for advancing Trump’s agenda.
- The math doesn’t work. No amount of ribbon-cutting offsets the $4.125 billion in cuts to health care, nutrition assistance, and clean energy investments Senator Collins cost Maine with just one vote.
Click to expand the topics below!
Senator Collins likes to point to the federal dollars she brings home. Those investments matter, but they aren’t unique to her. Every member of Maine’s congressional delegation does this work. Maine keeps two senators and two representatives fighting for funding regardless of who holds a given seat.
Collins claims she brought $1.5 billion to Maine. But counting checks isn’t the test. What matters is whether the policies she enacts make life better or worse for the people she represents. And on Trump’s budget bill, the answer is worse.
Collins had the power to stop OBBB, she chose not to. Collins has a believable talking point: she voted against the final OBBB. But that’s not the whole story.
The Medicaid cuts Collins cited as her reason for opposing OBBB were always in the bill and were worse in earlier drafts. If she wanted to stop them to protect Mainers’ access to affordable health care and rural hospitals, she could have voted no from the start.
Before the final vote, Collins cast a deciding procedural vote allowing the bill to advance. This is a pattern in her record under the Trump administration: symbolic opposition when a bill will pass without her anyway, and support when Trump actually needs her vote.
- States can spend only 15% of RHTP money on direct provider payments which were previously covered by Medicaid.
- That means Maine can replace only $142.5 million of the $2.7 billion it loses in Medicaid funding.
- 31,000 Mainers will lose coverage. Rural hospitals — already running thinner margins after cutting charity care by $80 million since 2018 — will be left to absorb the rest.
- At least four Maine hospitals are at risk of closure or significantly curtailing services due to this policy.
OBBB slashes $2.7B from MaineCare, Maine’s Medicaid program, which provides health care to individuals and families with low income, children, older Mainers, veterans, and people with disabilities. The “replacement” fund covers, at most, 5% of that.
Every dollar spent on food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) generates $1.54 in local economic activity. Cutting it doesn’t just hurt recipients, it hurts the grocery stores and small businesses in the towns that can least afford to lose customers.
OBBB cuts $1.1 billion over 10 years from food assistance programs that help families struggling to make ends meet and, in turn, support local businesses. These federal cuts shift up to $94 million in new costs onto Maine taxpayers with the bill getting bigger in a recession, exactly when families need it most.
$5.3 billion in planned Maine clean-energy investment is now at risk. Based on cancellation rates seen nationally, Maine will likely lose approximately $325 million in investment. That means fewer projects, fewer jobs, less economic activity, and higher costs. Maine households will pay approximately $80 more per year for electricity in a state that already carries one of the country’s highest energy burdens.
OBBB cost Maine $325 million in lost economic investment and will add at least $600 million to household energy costs over the next 10 years.
Based on recent figures, Senator Collins brings in roughly $2.5B in appropriations per decade, plus $950M from RHTP totaling $3.45 billion for Maine. Meanwhile, OBBB alone costs Maine $4.125 billion in cuts to health care, nutrition assistance, and clean energy investments over the next ten years. That’s in addition to the outsized tax cuts it gives to the ultra-rich and large corporations that compromise our ability to keep costs down for everyone else.
And OBBB isn’t the whole picture. This tally doesn’t touch the Iran war, DOGE cuts, tariff impact on cross-border trade, or the expiration of ACA subsidies — all separate costs to Maine families that Senator Collins’ record must answer for.
Mainers should judge Senator Collins on her record — not only on the money she claims credit for bringing home, but also the harm her choices leave behind.
Net: On Senator Collins’ watch, Maine is $675 million worse off, even before counting higher insurance premiums from the ACA credit rollback, tariff impact on Canadian trade, and cuts to federal services.
Note:
Figures reflect 10-year projections based on CBO, Maine DHS, and USDA SNAP data, and analysis of hospital financial reports (2018–2024).