Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins has been playing a very long game of pretending to be a hold-out on the unspeakably awful tax cuts bill that does everything from trying to plant an unconstitutional anti-abortion time bomb in tax law to ripping health insurance away from 13 million people. First, she said she had to have a promise that there would be a vote on the bipartisan plan to stabilize the Affordable Care Act. She got that agreement and pretended like it was a guarantee. She pretended like it would 1.) pass the Senate with Democratic votes (it won't) and 2.) offset the effects of repealing the individual mandate (it won't).
Now she's pretending like she had another demand: that the $25 billion Medicare cut triggered by passing this bill won't happen. And she's also pretending that she believes Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's promise that that he won't let that happen.
Collins said Thursday that she confronted McConnell "asking what is the plan to avert that," and was told that Congress would vote to waive the PAYGO cuts as they have more than a dozen times before, likely as part of the end-of-the-year government funding package.
"I met with Senator McConnell just yesterday, and he has assured me that that will not be allowed to happen," Collins said. "If it were going to occur, I would not even be considering voting for this [tax] bill."
Once again, the part she's ignoring is that Democrats are going to have to agree to waive those PAYGO cuts. And not just the Democrats in the Senate—the House maniacs would have to agree to do it, too. She's going to bet on them bailing her ass out?
When Collins announced that she was going to eschew a run for governor in her home state and remain in the Senate, she couched it in terms of being a critical voice inside the majority, and how a colleague told her that "the institution would suffer in your absence." She was all principle. "As I thought about the senator's words, I realized how much needs to be done in a divided, troubled Washington, if we are to serve the people that we represent effectively. I have demonstrated the ability to work across the aisle to build coalitions and to listen to the concerns of the people of my state, my country and my colleagues."
Bullshit, Senator. You've shown your true nature. You're a pretender. You pretend to be a champion of reproductive rights. You pretend to be a champion of bipartisanship and comity. You pretend to be an anti-Trump crusader. You are none of those things. You are hiding behind the fig leaf of "demanding" concessions on critical issues, then melting away when the promises aren't kept. You're no better than the rest of the rubber stamps for Trump in your party.
