ICYMI: As Deficit Balloons to Over $1 Trillion, Senator Collins is Now Backing Off Her Promise that the GOP Tax Bill Would Lower the Debt

ICYMI: As Deficit Balloons to Over $1 Trillion, Senator Collins is Now Backing Off Her Promise that the GOP Tax Bill Would Lower the Debt

For the second time this month, Senator Collins was called out by a major Maine newspaper for making false promises to defend her support for the Republican tax bill

Today, the Bangor Daily News shined a spotlight on Senator Susan Collins’ broken promises when she was selling the Republican tax bill to Mainers, including her promises that it would pay for itself and the economic growth would offset the budget gap. Now, Collins is backing off her previous promises that the tax bill would lower the debt. This comes on the same day as the national deficit is projected to surge past $1 trillion years earlier than expected. 

It’s the second time this month that a major Maine newspaper has called out Senator Collins for false promises, with the Portland Press Herald saying: “Predictions that cutting taxes on corporations, wealthy families and individuals would spur enough economic growth to increase tax collections – an argument made by Maine Sen. Susan Collins and others – turned out to be wrong."

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Bangor Daily News: Susan Collins’ opponents are hitting her on the GOP tax plan. Here’s what it did.

Michael Shepherd

August 21, 2019

• “The Maine senator has argued the economic growth from it would offset a budget gap. That hasn’t happened.”

• “Collins argued alongside other Republicans the tax cut would pay for itself. It hasn’t.”

• “Collins expressed confidence on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ in late 2017 it would ‘actually lower the debt.’ That hasn’t happened. Her office backed slightly off the argument this week while defending the package at large.”

• “The Maine senator’s record on former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law is nuanced. Collins voted against it in 2009 and later voted to repeal it”

• “The tax cut also endangered the Affordable Care Act … The Trump administration has since used the tax bill’s repeal of the so-called ‘individual mandate' to try to overturn the entire Affordable Care Act in court.”