Senator Susan Collins is reveling in her new found notoriety as chief saboteur of conservative policy. It was not even two years ago that the Honorable Senator from Maine chanted “Repeal and Replace” to the cheering delegates of the Maine Republican Convention. It would seem that the promise to remove ObamaCare was something akin to her promise to only serve two terms as a U.S. Senator: a lie.

Now she is touring the wheel of D.C. Punditry wielding a healthy disregard for the rule of law. Her criticism of President Trump’s order stopping ObamaCare subsidies is based on the emotion that she feels his decision hurts certain people groups. This may in fact be true but she is missing, by ignorance or design, the irrefutable and incontrovertible fact that the payments were illegal.

In order to pay the exorbitant price tag of the ACA, President Obama circumvented Congress by Executive Order and began paying insurance companies, subsidizing the high costs of government healthcare. The Constitution clearly states that the President cannot make any financial payments without Congressional authorization and a Federal Court has ruled that these payments were in fact illegal, criminal, and theft.

In light of this legal ruling and the Constitution, this sitting President is bound by law to correct the illegal and criminal actions of the past President. The problem of damage to any certain people groups may be a sad truth, but the fault lies not with those who are bound by law to correct the crime. The fault lies with those who committed the crime in the first place: President Obama, those in Congress who enabled the President with silence, and the insurance companies who are complicit in the fraud.

It is concerning at best, that the senior Senator from Maine seems content to base her decisions, and arguments for such, on emotions rather then facts and the rule of law. The healthcare debacle is a national crisis which is not best served by leaders who vacillate from year to year manipulating their political stances to accommodate political expediency, changing from election year rhetoric to special interest’s influence. Senator Collins should work to find solutions grounded in fact and law rather than emotion wielded in spite.