Press Herald - Sens. Susan Collins, a Republican, and Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, voted in favor of a Republican measure that would have funded the government through Nov. 21.
King had voted against that proposal last week but said in an interview Tuesday night that voting with Democrats, which would have ensured a shutdown, would give President Donald Trump more power and he didn’t want to take that risk.
“I think people saw this as a chance to stand up to him, but it’s going to be the opposite,” King said. “He’s talked about firing people, cutting programs … this could harm a lot of people.”
The Trump administration has wide discretion to designate essential federal workers who would remain on the job without pay and his top officials have proven unpredictable and eager to push the boundaries of presidential power, including threatening to fire nonessential workers who would be furloughed.
“This was a difficult vote, but in the end, I could not, in good conscience, vote to shut the government down and hand even greater power to the trio of Donald Trump, Stephen Miller and Russell Vought,” King said in an email Tuesday night.
Gov. Janet Mills said in a memo to the state’s workforce, which includes about 2,500 workers funded either in part or entirely by federal funds, that she has not received any information from the Trump administration about possible impacts.
“In years past when a federal government shutdown was a possibility, the federal administration would distribute guidance to the states,” Mills said Tuesday. “However, the Trump administration has not communicated with the state at all about a shutdown or its potential impacts. … In the event of a shutdown, our administration hopes we will receive guidance from the federal government about which specific funding would be disrupted.”
Press Herald
- Share of Mainers reliant on heating oil drops to lowest point in over 15 years
- Maine clinics plan to cut health care services if funding for abortion providers is not restored
- Portland’s emergency winter warming shelter is expected to look a little different this year. It will likely be farther from downtown, have fewer beds and share a building with another shelter. The plan, for now, is to put the warming shelter at 166 Riverside Industrial Parkway in the city’s Riverton neighborhood — far from its previous locations downtown.
- The federal Department of Education is reversing its decision to cut more than $600,000 in already allocated funding for the University of Southern Maine-based program to help veterans go to college, Sen. Susan Collins announced Tuesday afternoon. The program, called USM Veterans Upward Bound, would have ended on Sept. 30 if the funding hadn’t been restored.