Red County Caucus says U.S. Sen. Collins must choose individual rights

We of The Red County Caucus would like to remind U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine that the Constitution of the United States was written to protect the natural born rights of the individual. These rights, inherent, inalienable and God-given, have been, in times past and present, under repeated assault from activism from all corners of our society in an effort to undermine the founding ideal of this free republic: that the government of free men should defend and protect the free will of the individual. What is common sense was once commonplace but now a rarity to be sure.

U.S. Congress is now engaged in a pitted debate over the nuance, impact and economics of tax reform. The Red County Caucus is not prepared at this point to issue a statement on a tax reform plan as Congress is still far from formulating one. However, we will comment on the recent duplicitous behavior of Maine’s Senior Senator, Susan Collins.

U.S. Sen. Collins has threatened to sabotage the tax reform process unless the repeal of the individual mandate of Obamacare is removed. This is strikingly hypocritical of the good senator, who was heard on many occasions on the campaign trail, decrying to enthusiastic Maine voters the disastrous impact the individual mandate and Obamacare has had on Maine household budgets, all the while chanting “repeal and replace.” Now returned to Congress’ marbled halls, U.S. Collins’ mantra seems to have changed to “defend and deny” at all cost.

Can there be a more glaring violation of the Constitution than the individual mandate? To mandate, that is to force by law, an individual to purchase a product the individual may or may not want, to fund an ideal of socialized medicine that the individual may or may not want, and to do so under threat of penal action by the government, the maker of the product, is the very epitome of the kind of governmental abuse and overreach our Constitution was written to protect against. Yet, U.S. Sen Collins remains dogged in her determination to undermine, once again, Congress and the President’s attempt to fix a failing and outdated tax system in a fixated effort to defend a healthcare system she promised voters she would work to “repeal and replace.”

We ask U.S. Sen. Collins once again, who is she representing? Is it the bureaucracies and Washington power brokers who wish to force the individual, through a government mandate, to comply to their wishes? Or the individuals here in Maine who have and still protest this Individual mandate with its destructive impacts on the households of the state she represents. U.S. Sen. Collins must choose against the interests of Washington and for the individual rights of her constituents in Maine.