Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine)

Health-Care Reform

Snowe's willingness to work across party lines made her a key figure in the 2009 health-care reform debate.

As a member of the Senate Finance Committee, one of two Senate committees with jurisdiction over health care, Snowe was one of the few Republicans to cross party lines and support Finance Democrats on issues, such as taxing health-insurer profits.

Snowe was a member of Finance Chairman Max Baucus' (D-Mont.) powerful 'Gang of Six,' who spent summer 2009 trying to craft a bipartisan health-care reform bill. Snowe and Baucus joined Republicans Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Democrats Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Jeff Bingaman (N.M.) to try to find a compromise.

The group rejected the Obama administration's signature public health-insurance option. Snowe proposed a "trigger" option, in which the public plan would take effect only if private insurance failed to lower costs and expand coverage to the uninsured. The gang also considered Conrad's proposal to create a network of private, non-profit insurance cooperatives,

Snowe seemed willing to cut a deal, if the terms were right, and became the Obama administration's best hope for passing a bipartisan bill.

"There are not many occasions when we have the opportunity to sit down and immerse ourselves in an issue like this, an issue that has profound implications for the country, with historic overtones, to say the least," Snowe told the New York Times. "I feel privileged to participate."

In September 2009, Snowe told CBS's Face the Nation that the president should take a public health-insurance option off the table. "There's no way to pass a plan that includes the public option," she said.

By the time Finance Chairman Baucus released a bill in September 2009, Snowe's was the vote to get on health-care. Democrats needed the moderate Republican to add a sheen of bipartisanship to the bill.

During the Finance Committee's exhaustive 15-day mark-up of the Baucus proposal, Democrats were quite receptive to Snowe's amendments, including one that would weaken the requirement to buy health care after Snowe said she was concerned the government would force people buy plans they couldn't afford. In the end, Snowe was the only Republican to vote the bill out of committee to the full Senate. It passed 14 votes to 9.

But in the end, she didn't vote for cloture to send the bill to debate on the Senate floor.

The Economy

On economic issues, Snowe has sought to strike a balance between cutting government spending and providing support and relief for her constituents.

Snowe supported the 2008 financial bailout program that created the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). But she has since introduced legislation with Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) to strenghten oversight of the $700 billion program and its inspector general, Neil Barofsky.

She also bucked her party to support President Obama's 2009 economic stimulus plan, and touted the fact that she helped craft the targeted tax benefits included in the final bill.

Balancing the Budget

Snowe has long called for a balanced budget. While serving in the House in 1993, Snowe was one of four initial sponsors of legislation that would mandate a balanced budget, and one of her first acts as senator was to deliver a speech in front of a Senate committee supporting a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.

Her early Senate campaigns reinforced a message of drastically cutting costs in Washington. But Snowe has also emphatically fought to preserve spending on education and Medicare, and spoken out against measures she believed would harm small business owners in Maine even when those provisions proved costly.

One of the defining moments of Snowe's Senate career was her 2003 showdown with Republican colleagues and the Bush administration over the proposed $700 billion in tax cuts included in the 2004 budget. Snowe adamantly opposed the figure and wanted to cut that number in half, to $350 billion. She ultimately agreed to vote for a budget that endorsed $550 billion in tax cuts, but not without intensive pressure from Republican leaders and the White House and a promise from then Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) that House and Senate negotiations would produce a final budget that allowed no more than $350 billion in tax cuts over ten years. She also supported pay-as-you-go budget rules requiring any spending increases or tax cuts to be offset by other revenue.

Reproductive Rights

Snowe has long been a supporter of abortion rights. Just two years into her first Senate term, she attracted national attention at the 1996 Republican National Convention by fighting to have the anti-abortion stance removed from the party platform.

NARAL Pro-Choice America gives Snowe a 100 percent rating in 2009.Snowe has also been a strong advocate for women's health issues, calling from greater funding for women's health research.

Iraq & Defense Issues

Snowe tends to vote with Republicans on national defense issues. She supported both President Clinton's intervention in Kosovo and early military action in Iraq. She has also worked to save several Maine shipyards and military bases from closure over the years, battles that helped her in her first Senate bid and have earned her widespread support in Maine.

Snowe was an early advocate of unilateral military action against Iraq, arguing that the threat that the country was developing biological, chemical and radioactive weapons was too great to ignore. However, she became the second Republican to endorse the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

In July, 2007, Snowe joined then-Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) in co-sponsoring a bill requiring that withdrawal of American forces in Iraq commence within 120 days and that combat operations cease by April 30, 2008. Though Snowe initially opposed such measures, she said at the time that worsening conditions caused her to reconsider.

"Frankly, given the fact that the Iraqi government isn't prepared to change its own political direction, we should be prepared to change course with respect to our strategy," she told reporters at the time.

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