U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, walks into the Senate chamber on July 1, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
Before the U.S. Senate began its August break, Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who heads the upper chamber’s appropriations committee, packed spending bills for the next fiscal year with millions of dollars for Maine, a tactic she’s become well-known for.
Collins, who is up for reelection in 2026, has advanced more than $400 million in earmarks for the state and submitted requests for nearly $9 million more that will be considered when lawmakers return on Sept. 2. Millions of more dollars that would impact the Pine Tree State are also on the line through programmatic funding, additional federal grants and agency requests.
But earmarks failed to be included last time around. And since resuming office, President Donald Trump has also cut otherwise congressionally appropriated funding for various grants and programs in Maine and nationally, an initial signal that Collins’ otherwise steadily growing appropriations power has been upended during Trump’s second term.
Will this time be different?
There’s initial momentum. On Friday, the U.S. Senate passed three of its 12 appropriations bills, the first time since 2018 that the body has passed an appropriations bill on the floor before the start of August recess.
What’s explicitly at stake for Maine in these bills can be seen in earmarks, formally referred to as Congressionally Directed Spending, for community projects, but the state could also receive funding through programmatic and other funding included in the bills.
Among the bills advanced is more than $9 million in earmarks for Maine in the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies bill and more than $25 million for Maine in the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration bill. The Legislative Branch bill is the third that has passed so far but that proposal does not include earmarks.
Including these three bills, the Senate Appropriations Committee has marked up eight of the 12 bills so far, a step that allows the other five proposals to advance to the full body when lawmakers return from their break.
The eight draft bills include a total of $422 million in earmarks for Maine, and for the remaining four, Collins submitted nearly $9 million worth of requests, according to her office.
Will earmarks return?
One of the bills already marked up is the proposal to fund the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education.
On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee largely rejected in this bill the Trump administration proposals to slash funding for education programs, medical research grants, health initiatives and Ukraine security assistance.
That bill includes $112.4 million in earmarks for Maine, with more than $13 million for health care workforce training and almost $71 million for Maine hospitals and health care centers.
But recent history cautions those allocations may not come to fruition.
This past winter, the continuing resolution from GOP leadership cut all earmarks for community projects. Collins had secured nearly $361 million in earmarks before they were removed from the resolution, which she said she ultimately supported to avoid a government shutdown.
Congress is now in a similar place, again eyeing a possible government shutdown if it fails to pass appropriations bills by the end of the fiscal year on September 30.
If Congress opts for a short-term continuing resolution to avoid that, it would push the deadline to approve earmarks to a later date, but another year-long stopgap bill could eliminate all earmarks.
When asked how confident Collins is that her earmarks will be included for the next fiscal year, Collins’ Communications Director Phoebe Ferraiolo said there could be a scenario where Congress decides to do a partial continuing resolution, which would mean passing some appropriations bills and then passing a stopgap agreement for the remaining ones.
”Even if [Congressionally Directed Spending] is not included again this year, there are many other ways that Senator Collins will influence spending priorities,” Ferraiolo said.
For example, defense spending is always outside the earmark process and a key deliverable that Collins’ supporters have long praised.
Last week, the committee advanced the Defense Appropriations Act, which included billions of dollars in discretionary funding for Maine-based contractors such as Bath Iron Works, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and Pratt & Whitney Workforce, as well as millions in funding for defense research at University of Maine.
Employees at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard told Democratic U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, and her colleagues during a tour of the facility last week that securing funding in the next budget is a key priority.
“What we heard from workers and leadership was clear: they need stable funding, a reliable workforce pipeline, and a Congress that has their backs,” Pingree shared in a statement.
Clawing back funding
But stable, reliable funding has become an anomaly during Trump’s second term, and so far efforts to restore many of the cuts have been piecemeal and often challenged in the courts.
Regarding the bill to fund the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, for example, while the bill refutes many of the funding cuts from the Trump administration, the top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, said it’s “only half of the equation” given that the administration “is intent on ignoring Congress, breaking the law, and doing everything it can without any transparency, to dismantle programs and agencies that help families.”
Congressional Republicans approved a recissions bill in July that cancelled $9 billion in funding for public media and foreign aid. Although a small slice of what the White House initially wanted, it represents a win for Trump and his efforts to claw back money approved in spending laws. Collins was one of two Republicans to vote against the bill.
“Nobody really knows what program reductions are in it,” Collins said in a statement after the vote. “That isn’t because we haven’t had time to review the bill. Instead, the problem is that [the U.S. Office of Management and Budget] has never provided the details that would normally be part of this process.”
When Collins outlined her strategy for navigating disagreements with the Trump administration for Maine Morning Star this past spring, she said she’s had some success restoring funding by having conversations outside of public view, relying on her long-developed relationships.
“There is really no way to know how this will turn out — and that is true every year,” Ferraiolo said of 2026 fiscal year spending. “Each step is important — submitting request to the committee, getting it into the bill, having it survive the markup, getting the bill to the floor, having it survive conference, and having the bill signed by the president. We can never take any of these steps for granted, but each one gets us closer to success.”
Some voters have said Trump’s withholding of congressional appropriations and funding cuts underscored why Maine needs Collins, one of Congress’ most senior members and top appropriators. But others argued the executive’s actions have revealed a crack in Collins’ power.
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