Legislative Accomplishments

In December 2004, the President signed the most sweeping overhaul of the nation's intelligence community in 50 years. This historic legislation, authored by Senators Collins and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), reorganized the executive branch to transform the country's intelligence program into a modern structure designed to fight terrorism and other emerging security threats. The Collins-Lieberman bill created a Director of National Intelligence to serve as the head of the Intelligence Community and as the principal adviser to the President. The bill also established a National Counterterrorism Center to coordinate all national intelligence information related to terrorism and improve interagency coordination and operations. In addition, the bill took groundbreaking steps to improve border security, transportation security, information sharing, and standards for the issuance of driver's licenses.

In September of 1997, Senator Collins teamed with Senator Durbin to offer an amendment to the fiscal year 1998 Labor-HHS Appropriations bill to repeal a new tax break that was tucked away at the last minute in the conference report on the 1997 tax bill. This tax break amounted to a $50 million giveaway to the big tobacco companies. The amendment passed and was included in the final version of the bill, and the tax break was eliminated as a result.

In September 2006, Congress passed comprehensive port security legislation spearheaded by Senators Collins and Patty Murray (D-WA), who together worked for years in a bipartisan effort to address a vulnerability that many experts have described as the Achilles heel of our nation’s homeland security. The bill significantly strengthens security at American ports by establishing improved cargo screening standards, providing incentives to importers to enhance their security measures, requiring DHS to develop a plan for the resumption of shipping in the event of a terrorist attack, and mandating the installation of radiation detectors at the 22 largest American ports.

After more than a year of work, Senators Collins and Ben Nelson (D-NE) won passage in May 2003 of legislation to provide $20 billion in emergency state fiscal relief . The final bill retained a key Collins-authored provision directing half of the state aid, or $10 billion, to the Medicaid program to protect vulnerable citizens who were at risk of losing health care due to state budget cuts. Maine received $116 million over 18 months, half of which was used to provide health insurance to low-income citizens through Medicaid and half of which supported other critical education, health and social service programs.

Based on one of the key findings of the Senate Homeland Security Committee's report, “Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared,” Senators Collins and Lieberman authored legislation that reorganized FEMA within DHS and reunited the agency’s preparedness and response capabilities to meet the challenges of all aspects of emergency management. The bill was included in the fiscal year 2007 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Conference Report. Under the bill, FEMA would be strengthened and become an independent entity within the Department of Homeland Security. The bill also established a national disaster recovery strategy to assist with the recovery from future catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina.

In December 2006, Congress approved an extension of a tax extender package which included a provision authored by Senator Susan Collins in 2002 to provide a $250 above-the-line tax deduction to teachers who spend their own money on school supplies. According to surveys by the National Education Association, teachers spend, on average, $443 per year on classroom supplies out of their pockets. This tax provision expired in 2005. If Congress had not acted to extend this important law, many of our nation's educators may have faced a tax increase when completing their 2006 tax returns.

In September 2006, Senators Collins and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) secured passage of bipartisan chemical security legislation as part of the fiscal year 2007 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Conference Report. This legislation provides DHS, for the first time, with the authority to require security measures at more than 3, 400 chemical facilities and to enforce those standards by empowering the Secretary to shut down a facility that does not meet security standards. This legislation addresses one of the critical vulnerabilities in the protection of our nation’s infrastructure from terrorist attacks.

In December 2006, Congress approved a House-Senate compromise on postal reform legislation authored by Senator Susan Collins. The legislation is the first modernization of the Postal Service in more than 30 years. Senator Collins’ postal reform bill will streamline the rate setting-process to provide more predictability and stability in postal rates and will help ensure a stronger financial future for the Postal Service, the linchpin of a $900 billion mailing industry that provides nine million jobs nationwide in fields as diverse as direct mailing, printing, catalog companies, paper manufacturing, and financial services.

Senator Collins authored legislation establishing the Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP), which became law as part of the 2001 No Child Left Behind bill, and subsequently secured funding for the program. Prior to the enactment of REAP, rural school districts received funds calculated primarily based on enrollment. One Maine district, for example, received only $28 in 2001 to fund a district-wide Safe and Drug-free School program. REAP remedies this problem by allowing rural schools the flexibility to combine federal funds and by increasing overall funding for these small districts. As a result of REAP dollars, more than 4,000 school districts now receive additional funding. In many cases, this has doubled, if not tripled their federal allocation, with an average award of around $20,000. As a result of this program, Maine's rural and small schools receive an average of $1.6 million in additional federal funding every year.

In 2003, Senator Collins joined a bipartisan group to introduce the Greater Access to Affordable Pharmaceuticals Act, legislation making prescription drugs more affordable by promoting competition in the pharmaceutical industry and increasing access to lower-priced generic drugs, and led the effort to incorporate this bill into the Medicare Modernization Act (P.L. 108-173). The legislation, which closed loopholes in the Hatch-Waxman Act that had reduced the original law’s effectiveness in bringing lower-cost generic drugs to market more quickly, was based on a compromise amendment that Senators Collins and Edwards offered in the HELP Committee to S. 812, the Greater Access to Pharmaceuticals Act. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this legislation will cut our nation's drug costs by $60 billion over ten years.

In December 2006, Congress passed immigration legislation authored by Senator Collins that allows minor league athletes, such as the MAINEiacs, to qualify for the same category of immigration visas as major league athletes. Previously, MAINEiacs players and coaches from other countries had to apply for visas under the H2B visa program whose cap was met early in the year, keeping them out of the U.S. until Senator Collins and other congressional members could help them to obtain special waivers. Senator Collins’ legislation permanently amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to expand the P-1 visa program to include athletes that play on minor-league professional and high-level amateur teams such as the Lewiston MAINEiacs and the Portland Sea Dogs.

In 2001, Senator Collins’s bill, the Rural Access to Emergency Devices Act, was incorporated into the Public Health Improvement Act, which was signed by the President on Nov. 13, 2000. This bill established a $25 million grant program to allow small rural communities to purchase automatic external defibrillators that can restore life to a cardiac arrest victim.

In December 2006, the President signed a bill authored by Senator Collins and Russ Feingold (D-WI) that extended the term of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR). Without this legislation, the SIGIR’s term would have expired on October 1, 2007. The work of the SIGIR’s office, led by Stuart Bowen, has rooted out millions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse. This law allows the SIGIR’s important work to continue as long as tax dollars are being spent on Iraqi reconstruction projects.

As result of her work as founder and chair of the Senate Diabetes Caucus, Senator Collins has secured the passage of numerous pieces of legislation to increase funding for diabetes research and to promote better health care for people with diabetes. Senator Collins authored the Pediatric Diabetes Research and Prevention Act, which establishes a Type 1 Diabetes monitoring system and authorizes long-term studies of persons with Type 1 diabetes. This bill became law as part of the Children's Health Act of 2000. Senator Collins also introduced legislation to require Medicare to cover insulin infusion pumps for beneficiaries, and, as a consequence, the then-HCFA expanded its coverage policy in 1999 and Medicare now cover insulin infusion pumps and supplies. Senator Collins introduced the Pancreatic Islet Cell Transplantation Act, which helps to advance tremendously important research that holds the promise of a cure for the more than one million Americans with Type 1, or juvenile diabetes. This legislation was approved as a stand alone and signed into law in 2004. Since she founded the Diabetes Caucus, funding for diabetes research at the NIH has more than tripled.

Senator Collins’s bill, the Internet False Identification Prevention Act, was passed by Congress and signed by the President in December 2000. This law prevents the distribution over the Internet of false identification documents and templates. It also makes it easier to prosecute this criminal activity and establishes a coordinating committee that will concentrate the investigative and prosecutorial resources of several agencies with responsibility for enforcing laws that criminalize the manufacture, sale, and distribution of false identification documents.

Based on an investigation conducted by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations into fraudulent sweepstakes marketing, Senator Collins authored legislation regulating sweepstakes mailers and strengthening the ability of the Postal Service to combat deceptive mailings. This legislation was signed by the President in December 1999.

Tariff legislation introduced by Senator Collins that lifts the tariff on imports of a special rayon material that is important to manufacturing at the Procter & Gamble Tambrands factory in Auburn. The legislation, called a duty suspension bill, would lift the tariff for three years on a specific patented rayon fiber that the factory needs for its production. Duty suspension bills apply to a variety of imported products for which there is no U.S. producer of the product.

A tax credit for biomass development was first introduced in 1999 by Senator Collins as the Biomass Energy Equity Act and became law in 2004. This credit increases energy diversity, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and helps Maine’s forest products industry by turning waste biomass into energy. The Energy Bill, which was signed by the President in August 2005, extended this provision, providing nearly $3 billion for wind, biomass, and other renewable energy sources. This provision was again extended in December 2006. Thanks to Senator Collins’s successful efforts in the 108th Congress to expand the definition of biomass to include open loop biomass, this credit will help Maine's forest products industry by providing an important revenue stream for waste forest products.

During consideration of the 2005 Energy Bill, Senator Collins and Carper offered an amendment to promote combined heat and power. This legislation gives companies incentives to make maximum use of the waste heat generated from many industrial practices, which can be used to heat buildings or can be turned into electricity and sold on the grid. This legislation will save energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and help diversify our energy supply. It became law as part of the final Energy Bill.

The 2005 Energy Bill included an amendment which SMC offered, along with Senator Levin, regarding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This amendment requires the Department of Energy to develop procedures for using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in such a way as to reduce the impact on taxpayers and energy consumers, while maximizing oil supplies and improving US energy security. This amendment will help mitigate the impact of the Department of Energy's misguided policies on the nation's gasoline prices.

A resolution that Senators Collins and Trent Lott (R-MI) authored that expresses the Senate's disapproval of the Navy's proposed DD(X) acquisition strategy, which would result in only one shipyard building all the new destroyers, was included in the FY2006 Joint Budget Resolution. Senator Collins has subsequently worked through the committee process to reaffirm and provide funding for the two shipyard strategy.