In his Oct. 17 letter, David R. Clough claims that Sen. Susan Collins put small businesses first in voting for the Tax Cut Act in 2017, but she put our collective future last in voting for a massive giveaway to corporations and the wealthy. That vote is now projected to saddle the country with trillion-dollar deficits for years to come, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Sen. Collins told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the tax cuts would “actually lower the debt” because of enhanced economic growth. Not so much. The boost to the economy was fleeting, at best, with most corporations using the windfall to buy back their own stock.

The irony is that the interest we’ll pay on this debt will make it more difficult to make the kinds of investments as a nation that we need to make, like improving infrastructure or training our workforce, in order to support vibrant commerce in the future.

Any short-term gain that might have accrued to small businesses will be far overshadowed by the massive drag on the economy this debt imposes.

Sen. Collins’ poor judgment on this actually helped no one.

Mary Ann Larson

Portland

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