Maine Sen. Susan Collins pressed President Donald Trump’s agriculture secretary Tuesday for details on when farmers will receive remaining federal funds that were frozen as part of the Trump administration’s policy changes and cost-cutting initiatives.
Maine Sen. Angus King, meanwhile, had a spirited exchange with Trump’s secretary of veteran’s affairs over a list of hundreds of canceled federal contracts.
“Somebody has that list,” King said. “I don’t know why you can’t supply it to this committee.”
Maine’s two senators were participating in separate committee hearings with Cabinet secretaries.
During a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Collins told U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that she has heard from numerous farmers in Maine who were still waiting for word on previously approved grants or loans that had been frozen. Collins, a Republican who chairs the powerful budget-writing Appropriations Committee, told the secretary that the uncertainty is troubling to the farming industry.
“The timing of this funding is absolutely critical,” Collins said. “As you know well, agricultural producers are making purchases now for this year’s crops and processing facilities need to order equipment for the summer and the fall harvests. Local farm economies are fragile and timing is really important.”
Rollins replied that her team has been “going by line by line” over the frozen funds and had released most of it. Rollins said they were down to the last $5 billion of $20 billion and that they were moving as quickly as possible.
“Some of the funding that we have pulled back and then reopened, we have asked for reapplications to realign around this president’s priorities, which of course, not surprisingly, is not diversity, equity and inclusion or some climate programs,” Rollins said.
Some farm groups in Maine and nationally have accused the Trump administration of putting farmers — especially those with small operations — at financial risk by canceling or freezing grants that had been approved months ago. Several hundred farmers and supporters held a rally in Augusta on the issue last month.
Democrats on the appropriations subcommittee were more critical of the administration, accusing the department of putting food assistance programs at risk and of firing or accepting resignations from thousands of veteran agency workers without thinking about the repercussions.
“What I’ve heard from farmers in New Hampshire is that the federal government has always been a critical partner that our farmers could rely on — that is until now, sadly,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire. “What I’ve heard from farmers over the past 100 days of this administration is that they are not sure they can trust the federal government any more. I’ve heard from farmers across our state who no longer know if they can rely on the federal government honoring a basic signed contract.”
In a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing, meanwhile, King pressed VA Secretary Doug Collins for a list of 585 professional services contracts that were canceled because the agency said they were either duplicative or “non-mission critical.”
The Department of Government Efficiency had initially announced an even larger set of contract cancellations as part of DOGE’s cost-cutting initiatives. But the cancellations quickly encountered criticism from veterans’ groups, which raised alarms about the impacts on health care services to former service members.
The VA eventually scaled back 585 contracts. The department said those cancellations would save $1.8 billion and enable nearly $1 billion to be directed back into health care, benefits and other services for veterans.
King said he requested a list of those canceled contracts two months ago only to receive an official nonresponse last week.
“I want to know what they are,” King said. “I’m an optimistic kind of guy and I’m not suspicious but the fact that you won’t tell what the contracts are that are being renegotiated makes me wonder if there are things in those contracts that maybe you don’t want us to know about?”
“I will say that, from my perspective, that is not it and we will get you the information that you need,” the VA secretary replied.
When King pressed him on when that would happen, Collins said they were “working through it now.” But King called that answer unsatisfactory, adding that providing the list “couldn’t be any simpler.”
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
