As a left-of-center Democrat in Maine, I have opposed many of Sen. Susan Collins’ actions over the years. I’d argue that her past willingness to kowtow to President Trump and his MAGA Republicans helped create the mess we’re in today.

Yet I must applaud her for finally recognizing the cruelty inherent in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and voting against it. In doing so, Collins broke with her party’s leadership and stood up, however belatedly, for vulnerable Mainers.

Earlier this year, I wrote to Sen. Collins about the House’s initial version of this budget bill (which subsequent Senate tweaks only made worse). In her reply, she explained why she opposed that proposal and emphasized the importance of Medicaid to Maine. She wrote: “The Medicaid program is an important safety net, that for nearly 60 years, has helped poor and disabled individuals, including children, seniors and low-income families, receive health care.”

Collins also made clear her stance against the bill’s draconian Medicaid cuts: “Though there may be some inefficiencies in the Medicaid program, I oppose the $880 billion in Medicaid cuts … These deep cuts would hurt vulnerable individuals in our state, including the more than 400,000 Mainers … who depend on this vital program each year.”

In other words, even a Republican like Collins saw how dangerous this bill’s Medicaid rollback would be for Maine. (To put that 400,000 figure in perspective, that’s nearly one-third of our state’s population.)

Collins was right to oppose those cuts. Make no mistake: this bill is an instrument of cruelty. Not in the abstract, but in the arithmetic. Its provisions are less a budget than a reckoning, a plan written in numbers and enforced through silence. It is, plainly, class warfare. For decades, the Republican Party recoiled from that phrase. Now, having aligned itself with a man whose politics are draped in gold and grievance, it has embraced it.

What follows here is not rhetoric. It is a ledger.

The bill slashes more than $1 trillion from Medicaid. According to the Congressional Budget Office, that cut alone will leave nearly 12 million Americans without insurance. Medicaid, a program designed for the poor, is used by many who do not even know they are on it. One in three enrollees falls into that category. They are about to find out the hard way. At the same time, the bill delivers over $4 trillion in tax cuts, with the gains concentrated at the very top. High net-worth households, those who already have more than most, stand to collect $4.5 trillion over the next five years.

Immigration enforcement receives a surge in funding, ballooning past $100 billion. The result is a federal agency, ICE, that now rivals the largest in the country. What was once administrative has become militarized as support is pulled from Americans struggling to eat or see a doctor.

Between Medicaid cuts and related rollbacks, an estimated 11-12 million Americans will lose their health coverage. Many live in rural towns where hospitals operate on the edge of solvency. Maine is not immune. Hundreds of rural hospitals could be forced to restrict services or shut their doors entirely.

The bill cuts $287 billion from SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, over the next 10 years. That will mean hunger for at least 3 million Americans, many of them children, many of them Mainers.

And, make no mistake, Republicans know the hurt they are about to inflict. The tax cuts take effect immediately. The Medicaid cuts are delayed until after the 2026 midterm elections. This timing is intentional. By pushing the pain into the future, they have shielded themselves from political consequences while rewarding their donors in the present.

Republican leaders have insisted this is all about eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse.” That phrase has become the standard defense. But the real target is something else. They claim that new work requirements will only apply to able-bodied adults who are choosing not to work. It is a familiar story; a kissing cousin of Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen.” The story is false. Most adult Medicaid recipients who can work already do, or are enrolled in school. When Arkansas imposed work requirements in 2018, more than 18,000 people lost coverage in nine months. Employment did not increase.

There are giveaways in the bill, though they are meager. One provision exempts tips from taxation for workers earning less than $25,000. That expires in three years. The tax cuts for billionaires do not. Another section sets aside $50 billion for rural hospitals over five years. The gesture is symbolic. It cannot make up for what is being taken away in Medicaid. It is like shooting someone in the stomach, then handing them a Tylenol and asking for thanks (the people of Ukraine know what I’m talking about, here).

So, yes, I’ll give Sen. Collins credit for voting “No” on this cruel legislation. Her stand against the “big, beautiful bill” was the right thing to do, and a rare show of backbone. But it’s too little, too late. After years of enabling Trump’s agenda, one dissenting vote won’t undo the damage that’s been set in motion for the people of Maine.

Mainers deserve leaders who would fight for them before our health care and safety nets were on the chopping block. Collins’ belated courage in this vote is better than nothing, but it won’t heal the harm to our communities. We needed more from her — and we will need much more from the leader we should replace her with — to protect Maine people from this ongoing war on all of the values that make Maine worth defending.