congress Sen. Collins: GOP should be wary of big entitlement changes

Republicans should tread very carefully when it comes to overhauling entitlement programs during budget negotiations, Sen. Susan Collins warned on Thursday.

In particular, the Maine Republican warned GOP leaders against making drastic changes to Medicare. Previous GOP-led efforts to overhaul the popular entitlement program met with stiff resistance from Democrats and many voters.


Collins’ comments came as the Senate is closing in on approving its fiscal 2016 spending blueprint on Thursday, after the House approved its version on Wednesday.

Collins did say she would support the Senate GOP budget despite concerns about spending on domestic programs. But she warned that she may not support a final budget agreement produced by conference negotiations with the House if it goes too far on entitlements, particularly Medicare.

“This is not the House bill, which for example, has the privatization to some extent of the Medicare program, the premium support. And that is not in this budget,” Collins said.

Her major concerns center around the House provisions that provide premium support vouchers for young workers when they are eligible for Medicare.

Still, Collins said “I’m leaning toward voting on [the Senate budget] just because we do need a blueprint to guide the process.”

But, “my vote today does not predict my ultimate vote,” she added.

Collins’ remarks illustrate the next major hurdle for GOP leaders when they try and reconcile a more conservative spending plan from the House with a Senate budget written to have some appeal to moderates.

The eventual conference negotiation between the House and Senate will set the stage for the year’s spending bills that must pass before the end of September. That appropriations process is sure to produce a tug of war between defense hawks, fiscal conservatives and moderate Republicans — the same exercise each chamber has gone through this month but with far more cooks in the kitchen.