More than 100 protesters gathered in downtown Portland Wednesday to rally against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins’ decision to support the GOP tax bill.
Collins has said she would get behind the plan after a commitment from GOP leaders to shore up the Affordable Care Act and address other concerns. But rally organizer Rachel Weinstein says she worries those promises are too risky.
“If her children, if her nieces and nephews, were in the lower middle class and she thought they could really be negatively affected, would she feel safe enough then with just the promises she’s been given to adopt this tax code?” she says. “I just doubt it.”
Many at the rally criticized the Senate’s swift approval of the 400-plus-page bill in the middle of the night. But Diane Russell, a rally-goer and a 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, says the process is not the real problem.
“The real problem is that the reason they did not do a process is because they knew that the level of outrage that we would have in this country would be a huge furor. And that’s exactly what’s happened,” she says.
Both chambers of Congress have passed varying versions of the bill. Now they’ll have to reconcile the differences and create a unified piece of legislation for President Donald Trump to sign into law.