Extraordinarily gifted legislators in the United States Senate are rare. As preconditions to their effectiveness they must accumulate both significant seniority in the body of 100, and the respect of their ever changing 99 colleagues. Its a small club â the United States Senate â and everyone knows who has got the ability and the respect to guide big lifts through the (intentionally) complicated process.
Maines Senator Susan Collins is one of the handful of senators who command the respect of her Republican Conference colleagues and most of the Democratic senators who actually care about making the country run well. That is why Collins is the Chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and is also one of the 17 senators on the critical Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. (Collins is also a member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.)
As chair of the Appropriations Committee, Collins has a unique power to guide the countrys spending. In partnership with the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (“SASC”) Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), Collins greatest responsibility as a legislator is to assure the American military is fully funded to the level necessary to “provide for the common defense” as the Preamble of the Constitution succinctly puts it.
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Collins long ago earned a reputation as a Senate “workhorse,” and her 10,000th consecutive Senate roll call vote â extending the unbroken voting streak she began in 1997 â made her the first Senator in U.S. history to have cast this many votes without ever missing one. Even as Joe DiMaggios 1941 run of hits in 56 consecutive games is regarded as untouchable, so is Collins remarkable milestone (which towers higher with every roll call vote she makes.)
All of that experience and all of that earned respect will be needed in the weeks and months immediately ahead as Collins, along with Wicker and the Senate GOP leadership, tackle perhaps the most difficult challenge of her already distinguished and widely admired career: Allocating the funds needed to modernize the Pentagon in an era of rapidly changing technology when it comes to war and intelligence gathering, both the visible markers of American power like ships, submarines and the new B-21 bombers which provide the nation with deterrence and the secret and extraordinarily sensitive virtual stockpiles of cyber strength. Collins must do this even as hyper-partisanship engulfs the countrys politics.
Collins faces the urgent need to thread this extremely partisan era which is defined by negative polarization and rhetorical extremism of both the far left and far right. The nation requires a steady and effective set of military appropriation bills that will keep the nations defenses funded for the immediate demands of the conflict with Iran, even as the United States must continue to define and meet the challenge posed by the aggressive plans of Chinas iron-fisted Leninist dictator Xi Jinping.
That Collins is leading in this moment of peril is very fortunate for the country. That she has to do so in what is for her an election year against a self-described “communist” and wildly extremist radical from the fringe of the Democrats far left edge is a new challenge.
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