Collins rebukes House Republicans

A GOP senator broke with House Republicans on Sunday, rebuking her colleagues for playing politics with ObamaCare. 

{mosads}Maine Sen. Susan Collins (R) noted her opposition to the president’s signature healthcare law, but said that she wouldn’t support forcing a government shutdown with poison pill ObamaCare provisions.

“I disagree with the strategy of linking Obamacare with the continuing functioning of government-a strategy that cannot possibly work,” Collins said in a statement released Sunday afternoon.

The centrist  swing-vote GOP senator called on President Obama and “congressional leaders to sit down immediately and negotiate at least a stopgap funding measure to avoid a disruption in many vital programs on which our citizens rely.”

Collins released the statement minutes before GOP House members stood on the steps in front of an empty Capitol building to highlight the decision by Senate Democratic leaders not to call back senators to consider the House-passed funding bill.

Collins added that the congressional leaders and Obama should try to work out an elusive grand bargain to move past the seemingly status quo fiscal crises that have marked the past few years of split government.

“I also call on the president to resume the budget discussions he had been having with those of us attempting to forge a long-term fiscal plan to address our unsustainable $17 trillion debt without resorting to constant brinkmanship and the threat of a government shutdown,” Collins said.