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Susan Collins
The Maine Campus made numerous calls to Sen. Susan Collins’ campaign office to request an interview. Her office was unresponsive to these requests.
Tom Allen
On the Economy:
“[The economy is] already in a recession for sure. … It didn’t have to be this bad; it didn’t even have to happen this way, but we got to this position because the Bush economic policies, those massive tax breaks for the very wealthy in 2001, 2003 and 2006, drained – have already drained – probably $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in revenue … I voted against them because I thought they were reckless and fiscally irresponsible, which the evidence indicates they were. . We have to re-regulate our, and develop a new set of regulations for, our financial markets, and that, I’m sure you’ll be hearing from that in Congress early next year, and we certainly have to reform some of the mortgage lending practices that allow people to make – lenders to make – very risky loans to borrowers who are unlikely to pay them back.”
On Education: “… I’m a little reluctant to have the federal government start telling colleges what percentage of their endowment they should use. … I think the competition among colleges for good students seems to me to be evolving in a way that they wind up chasing students with economic needs. … [The level of federal funding for education is] inadequate. I mean, one of the things the Bush Administration did by dropping federal revenues so dramatically over a period of time to give tax breaks for the wealthiest people in the country was they wound up with less money for education and health care and environmental protection and Head Start and community development and so they have consistently tried to reduce federal spending on the domestic side.”
On Energy: “We have to free ourselves from oil as much as we can. … Now we did pass, late last year, we did pass a bill to increase CAFE standards for automobiles and light trucks. The first increase in a couple, three, decades, but we didn’t really go far enough. We can do a lot better than that, and in doing that. I think we have to also rely more on wind and solar for the generation of electricity and run our cars on the electricity as we do on gasoline. … I think that the oil companies have plenty of areas where they can already drill, and the most likely productive areas are in the Gulf of Mexico, where they hold leases today, which they’re not pursuing as much as they could. I don’t have objections to, you know, additional leases being made in parts of the Gulf of Mexico, but I’m opposed to drilling in the Gulf of Maine, and I’m opposed to drilling on Anwar.”
On War: “Well in Iraq, I’ve supported a time, time – well, deadline I call it – a deadline for our withdrawal that would be 16 to 18 months from whenever it was imposed, and that’s the way George Mitchell brought peace to Northern Ireland, by setting a date as Good Friday to reach an agreement; then the contending parties actually had to, you know, compromise their differences. I think that’s the way we should leave Iraq. That is my position; it’s Barack Obama’s position; it’s the government of Iraq’s position, but it’s not – and it will probably be George Bush’s position before long, because he’s got to find, you know, some sort of agreement with the Iraqis before he leaves office. It’s not Susan Collins’ position, and it’s not John McCain’s position because they still believe in an open-ended commitment. … Now I think some additional troops are needed in Afghanistan, but the mission there is going to be, we’re going to be reliant more on special forces and targeted strikes. We can’t control all of Afghanistan. It’s too big, too poor, too populated.”
