MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • July 19, 2020
Last month, Sen. Susan Collins helped pass the Great American Outdoors Act, a rare, piece of pro-environmental legislation in the Age of Trump. The bill includes permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Act and directs money to address the National Park Service’s maintenance backlog. Sen. Collins is rightly touting that good vote for the environment, but the past 3½ years show a much more mixed record. The defining moment came when she voted for Donald Trump’s notorious Tax Cut and Jobs Act. That legislation not only increased the nation’s deficit by perhaps $1.5 trillion with its lavish tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy but also undercut protections for our country’s water, air, wildlife and wildlands. One of those pristine wilderness areas was the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. ~ John Demos, South Berwick