Susan Collins

At $3.4 billion, the overall Department of Defense fiscal year 2017 budget request for the European Reassurance Initiative is four times the amount requested last year.

I believe that your record of bolstering our Naval Fleet will be one of your greatest legacies.

There is no substitute for presence in our ability to project power.

I've been very concerned about the build-up of the Chinese Navy. This is a real issue that concerns me as China has been more and more aggressive.

It is a small amount of money, and it has done a lot of good.

I am very disappointed and, indeed, in some ways shocked, that the administration did not include any funding at all for this program.

We do need a more cooperative and aggressive approach to get after these terrible con artists.

I think it is important to note that the heroin epidemic affects tiny towns, rural areas, as well as our larger cities.

In response to this problem, Senator Leahy and I have introduced a bill to greatly toughen the penalties for straw purchasing and illegal firearms trafficking.

I hope you will have a listening session in a rural area--we talked about that in my office--as opposed to just large urban areas like L.A. and DC.

Even if they were reworded to say, was your pain attended to or managed, rather than being worded in the way they are, I think it would help.

As a result, 26 Senators signed a letter that I spearheaded with Senator Heidi Heitkamp to Secretary Burwell asking CMS to take a look at the results of those well-intentioned questions.

As Senator Collins mentioned in her opening remarks, seniors are inextricably and often unwittingly linked to increased availability of prescription opioids.

It is my pleasure to introduce the President's nominee to be our next Ambassador to Lithuania, Anne Hall.

One of the top priorities of this Committee is to wage the battle against criminals who are constantly trying to swindle American seniors out of their hard-earned savings.

Do you know what is in your suitcase?

An important manpower issue that is facing the Air Force and that affects operations is the shortage of drone pilots.

I want to thank you, General Welsh, for coming with your wife last winter to visit the air refueling wing in Bangor.

That represents one of the largest deployments in the past decade.

What we are finding is that a lot of these companies are not doing the manufacturing, and so it is a very new and interesting business model, and I am convinced that it is one that is really negative for patients, providers, hospitals, and…

If it is a short enough time, it is not going to be worth the amount of money that the manufacturer--well, they are not manufacturers; they are more like what I would call hedge fund pharmaceutical companies--would pay to get the rights to…

I think you raise an excellent point in your last statement.

We still don't treat mental illness the same way we treat physical illness in this country from the perspective of Federal reimbursement policies and programs, which is pretty stunning in this day and age.

To be clear, the FAA should be ensuring that local communities have a voice when decisions that affect them directly are being made by the agency. ____________________

It's clear that you can't arrest your way out of this problem, and yet it's law enforcement that is having to deal with it in many cases.