Republican Sen. Susan Collins is casting doubts on the financial feasibility of President Donald Trump's proposal to issue $5,000 payments to most Americans if the GOP keeps control of Congress.
But Collins did not go as far as her colleague from Maine, Sen. Angus King, in criticizing Trump.
Collins said on Friday that she still doesn't know the details of the president's proposal because she skipped the Republican convention in Texas to campaign in Maine. But the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee — one of two panels that controls discretionary federal spending — said she understands there no income caps and that the cost would be "extraordinarily expensive."
"In excess of a trillion dollars, from the initial analysis that I have read," Collins said. "So I don't see that as being feasible in this economic environment. Maybe some scaled-down version that is limited and targeted, but not from the broad outlines that I've heard, not what the president has proposed."
Trump suggested giving $5,000 to every adult citizen, but only if voters keep Republicans in control of Congress after the November elections. The proposal has received a chilly or skeptical response from some Republicans and has been denounced by Democrats and some fiscal and legal experts.
King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, was among those who criticized the idea.
“The $5,000 check for U.S. voters if Republicans win both the House and the Senate is flat out illegal and a federal crime," King said in a statement. He then pointed to a federal statute that says it is a federal crime for political candidates to offer people money is committing a federal crime.
"Politicians promise frequently, ‘if you vote for me, I'll fix social security or improve your economic prospects in some other way,’ but this is a case where the public official is trying to get people to vote a certain way, based upon giving them money — precisely what the law prohibits," King said.
Collins didn't go as far as King, saying she didn't know the basis for his assertion that the payout would be illegal. But Collins said that she doesn't believe fiscal policies, like the one that Trump has floated, should be tied election outcomes.
"Obviously there are different policies pursued by different policies, but this seemed to be in the nature of a reward," Collins told reporters after an event in Augusta.
Collins faces a difficult reelection battle this November and her seat could be key to which party controls the Senate and, by extension, the success of Trump's second-term agenda. She is the only Republican senator up for reelection in a state that Trump lost in 2024 and her opponent on the fall ballot, former state Senate President Troy Jackson, as well as his Democratic allies are working hard to try to tie Collins to Trump — or at least accuse her of failing to use her influence to resist his controversial policies.
Collins was one of several potentially vulnerable incumbents who did not attend the midterm GOP convention in Texas during which Trump urged his supporters to turn out in November as if he was on the ballot. Polls have suggested that Trump is unpopular with many of the independent voters that will be key to either candidate winning in November because they make up nearly one-third of Maine's electorate. But Collins noted that she has always skipped conventions during years when she was up for reelection.
"Because I need to be here and want to be here in Maine campaigning," Collins said.
