Federal agencies are treating seniors better than they did 20 years ago, says Maine Senator Susan Collins, a member of the Senate Special Committee on Aging for nearly a generation.

From upping the ability of the elderly to live longer in their homes and aiding the increasing number of seniors starting their own businesses, help for the elderly from Washington has expanded in many ways, says the Republican chairing the panel in an interview Monday from her Maine-trinket-filled office just north of the Capitol.

She notes in the past, long-term-care facilities were dumping grounds for seniors whether they really needed to be there or not. She says growing federal efforts in recent years have gone a long way to change that.

Grown, too, has the political clout of seniors in the two decades the senator has spent on the committee representing the state with the highest percentage of people over 65 in the nation. She joins their ranks in eight months.

Only Florida, as far south as Canadian-bordering Maine is north, has a greater concentration of the elderly.

As evidence of the power of the expanding power of the nation’s elderly, she points out the fastest growing demographic in the nation are men and women over 85.

The old-old, like the young-old, are outspoken and go out of their way more than the less aged to make their voices heard at the ballot box and in emails, phone calls, emails, petitions, etc., etc., to their representatives in Washington, Collins says.

She, along with many Washington insiders, credits the outpouring of opposition from the near elderly who were facing significantly higher insurance premiums as a major factor in the quashing of TrumpCare last month.

“If you look at the collapse of the health-reform bill in the House, young seniors, 50 to 64, were instrumental in pointing out the shortcomings,” says Collins.

She also credits the growth of senior clout for President Donald Trump’s promise in the campaign that he would not try to change their entitlement programs, including Medicare and Social Security, in substantial ways.

While the television news programs are dominated with politicians fiery and ideological, Collins is respected in the nation’s capital for being soft-spoken and moderate.

The over-the-top bluster of Trump as President turns her off as his did when she openly opposed him in August as a candidate.

While still recoiling often from his style, philosophy and strategies, she wishes he would think twice about his inflammatory tweets and “not constructive” foreign policies, but Collins attests Trump should be given a chance, as she says any President should.

One area where she says she agrees with Trump is on trade.

Collins says too many trade agreements were made by past administrations with the belief Americans would benefit from lower prices from more goods from abroad.

“If you don’t have paycheck, you don’t care if an article of clothing is a dollar cheaper,” says the Senator.

As one of the three Republican Senators who voted for the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, Collins says the law has proven a mixed blessing.

On the up-side, she credits the legislation with curbing abuses that robbed many seniors of their savings in the financial crisis and institution protections to ward off another economic disaster.

Among the safeguards, Collins says has worked has been her contribution to the bill of capital buffers for banks to prevent them from running out of money and collapsing again in a time of stress.

On the down-side, she says Dodd-Frank has made it harder to get a mortgage and expanded compliance costs on small banks which has forced many to be bought out by larger operations better able to bear the burden through economies of scale.

While acknowledging consolidation in the banking industry was going on for years before Dodd-Frank, the Senator says the law has quickened the pace---including in her home state

Speaking about harder, Collins says she is trying harder than ever to get a female senator on the Aging Committee to drop her opposition Senior Safe Act which gives financial workers and institutions immunity from privacy suits for disclosing suspected transactions involving elder abuse to regulators and law enforcement officials.

The Senator said the her-- “you can guess who it probably is” --killed the bill in the last session of Congress.

“It’s very frustrating. The bill passed the House last year,” says Collins.

One safe guess for the doomer of the Safe Act could be Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Liberals have criticized the bill for failing to require financial businesses and their employees to bring transactions they mistrust as possibility exploiting seniors to the authorities.

But Collins, balks, claiming an obligation would only bring opposition as another mandate from Washington.

She prides her home state of Maine for taking the lead in enacting the voluntary approach with the law suit safeguard.