Personal Pleas to Senator on the Bubble

WASHINGTON — As a group of progressive activists and constituents prepared for a 15-minute meeting Wednesday with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, they sat in the lobby of her office and developed a last-ditch strategy to persuade her to vote against the $1.5 trillion tax bill barreling through Congress: tears.

“If Sen. Collins actually saw you as a human, saw me as a human, then she wouldn’t pass any of this,” said Ady Barkan, a member of the Center for Popular Democracy, who recently learned he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, and uses a wheelchair.

Collins, after weeks of wavering, cut several deals with Republican leaders in exchange for going along with the tax overhaul that passed the Senate this month and is on track to be sent to President Donald Trump by Christmas. Among other things, the Senate version of the bill would repeal the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that most Americans have health insurance or pay a penalty.

Among the provisions she secured was support for bipartisan health care legislation to stabilize the health care law’s insurance markets, whose prices could increase if the mandate repeal is enacted. She also claims to have a commitment from Republican leaders to prevent automatic Medicare spending cuts that could occur as a result of arcane budget rules that would kick in after the tax cut is passed.

Those trade-offs still seem to be in place as far as Collins is concerned. But because Collins is one of the few Republican senators who sometimes votes against her party, the pressure from opponents of the tax plan to flip her vote is rising as the bill inches closer to final passage, possibly as early as next week.

On Wednesday, a group of activists and Maine residents, led by Barkan, met with Collins to express their concerns about the bill. They said they feared it would destabilize the health care system that many Americans rely on and would lead to spending cuts to social safety net programs that poor and sick people could not survive without.

Most of all, they say, they worry that Collins, despite her good intentions, is getting duped by Republican leaders eager to notch their first major legislative victory since assuming control of Congress and the White House.

The event was closed to the news media, but streamed live over Facebook.

“You have to protect us before you vote yes,” Barkan said to Collins during the meeting. (Last week, Barkan confronted Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., about the tax bill on an airplane.) “They’re lying to you.”

Collins remained respectful and strained to convince the room of about a dozen skeptics that the promises that had been made to her were ironclad.

She defended her decision in the face of the group’s challenges that previous Republican promises for the tax bill had been broken, including a commitment to not add to the deficit and to not benefit the rich, and that written agreements are not law.

“I do not believe that I’ve given up leverage,” Collins said. “I’ve used my leverage to negotiate agreements that are promises to me.”

She added, “I’m sorry that you don’t believe in the agreements.”

The deals that Collins struck that extend beyond the tax bill have been the subject of much speculation and doubt in Washington, because they would require the backing of House Republicans and some Democrats.

But around the halls of the Capitol on Wednesday, Collins appeared to be increasingly comfortable with voting for the tax cuts.

She said that she had a positive discussion Tuesday with Vice President Mike Pence about her health care concerns and that she was generally supportive of the shape that the final tax bill was taking. Collins also was not biting on Democrats calls to delay the vote. She rejected the suggestions that the tax vote should be put off so that Doug Jones, the Alabama Democrat who was elected to the Senate on Tuesday night after a special election, could be seated first and cast a vote.

“I see no need to wait for Doug Jones to become a senator,” Collins said. “We vote all the time in lame-duck sessions with retired and defeated members casting votes.”

After her meeting at her office, it did not appear that Collins was ready to change her vote.

But Collins said she appreciated the chance to hear her critics out and explain herself.

Asked whether she was moved by the meeting, she replied, simply, “Of course.”