In a recent interview with News Center Maine, Senator Susan Collins claimed that the Republican Party is just as invested in protecting our environment as young voters want them to be.
But her claim couldn’t be further from the truth. Last year, Senator Collins lost the support of the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund -- which had endorsed her in 2014 -- due to her active enabling of the Trump administration’s assault on our most important environmental protections. LCV was “alarmed by her willingness to put the wishes of corporate special interests over the needs of Maine people and our environment” after she received an abysmal 21% on their 2018 National Environmental Scorecard.
Senator Collins: The one area where I think we haven’t done as good of a job is on environmental issues. I believe we need to do more to let young people know we care just as much about clean air and clean water as they do.
Get the facts about Senator Collins’ environmental record:
-
Senator Collins received a 21% rating from the League of Conservation Voters on the 2018 National Environmental Scorecard.
-
Senator Collins voted to confirm Trump nominees who have a record of putting corporate polluters’ interests first, including Andrew Wheeler for Deputy Director of the EPA. He “has dedicated his career to weakening environmental protections” and “served as a lobbyist for numerous fossil fuel clients.”
-
Senator Collins voted to confirm more than a dozen of Trump’s anti-environment nominees, including well-known climate change deniers like Jeffrey Bossert Clark.
-
Senator Collins co-sponsored legislation that would endanger Maine’s waterways by weakening protecting against aquatic invasive species and could potentially cost Maine millions of dollars a year.
-
Senator Collins has taken over $400,000 from the oil and gas industry over the course of her career — and in early 2019, Collins received more than five times the amount of campaign donations from the Texas fossil fuel industry than she did from Mainers.
-
Senator Collins voted to hand the oil and gas industry $25 billion in tax cuts, including $6 billion for ExxonMobil alone.
-
Senator Collins voted to allow oil drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge — over 19 million acres of sensitive public land.
-
Senator Collins voted to roll back a rule that cracked down on payments made by the oil and gas industry to foreign governments, decreasing transparency.
###