Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, known for her piqued emotions, said that she was annoyed that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called out her obstructionism in the 2009 recovery bill to pull the nation out of the post-Bush Great Recession, NBC News reports.
Saying that the US needed a strong stimulus plan to recover from the Trump coronavirus recession, Schumer stated that resistance led by Collins and others pushed the Senate to pass a smaller stimulus package in 2009, which set back economic growth by years.
“No,” Schumer said on CNN Tuesday night. “We made a big mistake in 2009 and ’10. Susan Collins was part of that mistake. We cut back on the stimulus dramatically and we stayed in recession for five years. What was offered by the Republicans was so far away from what’s needed, so far away from what Biden proposed that he thought that they were not being serious and wanting to really negotiate.”
A displeased Collins stated her annoyance with Schumer’s comment, pushing it off on the fact that she was reelected in November 2020, not that her demands for smaller stimulus packages in 2009 and this year puts the nation in a precarious economic situation.
“I thought that Leader Schumer’s comments were bizarre,” Collins told NBC News on Wednesday, noting that she was one of three Republicans to support then-President Barack Obama’s $787 billion package to mitigate the pain of the financial crisis. He voted for the same package that I did. So, for Chuck Schumer, who was intimately involved in the negotiations as the assistant leader, to somehow criticize me for taking the same position that he did, is simply bizarre. And I think it reflects regrettably his inability to accept the fact that despite pouring $100 million into defeating me, the people of Maine said no.”