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Melinda Swayne of Bryant Pond is a Navy veteran.
I served in the U.S. Navy for 26 years — from 1999 to 2025. In that time, I deployed to the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Japan and Bahrain. Today, I live in Bryant Pond with my husband, who is also a veteran.
Maine veterans like us put everything on the line to defend our country. Our national defense budget, which Sen. Susan Collins plays a key role in setting, should protect the people who serve, not be used as an ATM for her political donors.
That’s why, when I read the recent ProPublica investigation about the Collins 2020 campaign allegedly taking illegal money from a defense contractor, I felt deeply betrayed. Not just by Collins, but also by our current commander in chief who reportedly derailed the FBI’s recent investigation into whether or not our senator, who is supposed to work for Mainers, sold us out.
Now I want answers from Collins. Real answers, because Maine veterans deserve a senator who will fight for them.
In the Navy, I was a Naval Flight Officer and later transitioned to work in military medicine. Healthcare is a passion of mine. With Collins as chair of the Appropriations Committee, I’d like to know why VA healthcare is not fully funded, but Navatek is getting contracts that produce little of value.
The VA was created in 1930, and the U.S. has a history of caring for veterans that goes back much further than that. VA healthcare exists for one reason: to take care of the women and men who served their country in uniform. From battle wounds to mental health services, the VA promises to “honor America’s Veterans by providing exceptional healthcare that improves their health and well-being.”
It’s supposed to be there when veterans need it, with professionals who understand the unique needs of the people who served. So why are there severe staff shortages at the VA? Why do veterans have to deal with canceled or rescheduled appointments, delayed benefits, and longer wait times?
And that’s only talking about Susan Collins’ choices when it comes to healthcare for veterans. How about healthcare for the rest of Maine?
Collins cast a decisive vote to advance President Donald Trump’s budget reconciliation bill that gave over $1 trillion in tax cuts to the ultra-rich and cost Maine more than $4 billion in cuts to healthcare, nutrition assistance, and clean energy investments over the next 10 years. That bill slashes $2.7 billion from MaineCare, Maine’s Medicaid program, which provides healthcare to individuals and families with low income, children, older Mainers, and people with disabilities.
Collins seemingly won’t take responsibility for these massive healthcare cuts because of her final “no” vote on the bill. But I believe casting a key vote to keep the bill alive and then voting against it only once her vote apparently no longer mattered is playing political games.
I believe she’s hoping Mainers won’t notice as she allowed the diminishing of our healthcare to fund massive tax cuts for billionaires. But we’re not so easily fooled. I see her voicing symbolic opposition or “concern” when a bill will pass without her vote anyway, and offering support when Trump actually needs her vote.
The people of Maine need a senator who won’t enable a reckless president to drag us into new forever wars when we need healthcare, and good schools, and gas and groceries we can afford here at home. We’re smarter than that.