After hemming and hawing about its disastrous impacts on Alaskans, Alaska’s U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski caved and cast a deciding vote for Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” that makes billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy permanent while slashing social safety net programs for millions across the country.
But she wants everyone to know it was really hard.
“This was one of the hardest votes I have taken during my time in the Senate,” she said in a prepared statement following the vote that advocates worry will devastate the state’s already-troubled healthcare and food safety net systems. In comments to reporters, she called the vote “agonizing,” but that extending the president’s 2017 tax cuts and other resource-extraction-focused measures balanced out the measure in her eyes.
She also boasted in the statement about a handful of provisions in the bill aimed at sparing Alaska from the most severe cuts to Medicaid and food stamps that are set to be imposed on the rest of the nation.
“My goal throughout the reconciliation process has been to make a bad bill better for Alaska, and in many ways, we have done that,” she said.
In return for her vote, Alaska won’t have to immediately pay millions of dollars into food stamps — as most other states will — and some fishing villages and whaling captains will get a tax break. An excise tax that would have made solar and other renewable projects too costly to compete with fossil fuels was also removed. However, one of the biggest sweetheart provisions — a sharp increase in federal Medicaid funding for Alaska — was successfully challenged as being outside the scope of the bill and ultimately removed.
In her statement, Murkowski pointed to a $50 billion rural health fund that’s supposed to help rural hospitals, which are particularly sensitive to cuts to Medicaid, when millions of Americans lose health coverage due to the bill. She also said she had “secured commitments” from the Trump administration that Alaska would get special treatment on issues related to Medicaid and SNAP.
The naked ploy to buy off Murkowski has been a central story for the GOP megabill, and has picked up names like the “Alaska Purchase,” “Klondike Kickback,” and “Polar Payoff.”
“Did I get everything I wanted? Absolutely not,” Murkowski told reporters after the vote. “I had to look on balance, because the people in my state are the ones that I put first.”
It’s unclear which Alaskans she’s referring to, as most stand to lose from the bill.
Alaska health care advocates warn that the changes to Medicaid will result in devastating, far-reaching impacts for all but the wealthiest Alaskans. The Medicaid cuts in the bill are expected to result in the loss of coverage for as many as 40,000 Alaskans, but their impact on the health care system is expected to have ripple effects that will raise costs and limit access to coverage for everyone. Various health care clinics, groups, and state legislators have warned that the loss of coverage for low-income Alaskans will make it nearly impossible to maintain the current, already insufficient infrastructure, resulting in a loss of care for many more people.
Estimates suggest that as many as 3,000 health care jobs could be lost, and some clinics may close altogether, leaving some communities with no option but to travel for care.
“What is the end game here?” wrote House Speaker Bryce Edgmon and Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel in a New York Times op-ed before the vote. “How does it help anyone to terminate health care coverage for our most vulnerable through red tape or take away food for families who have limited to no options for gainful employment? … Alaska is one of the most amazing places in our country and Congress is risking our way of life to give money to the rich.”
The legislation will next head to the House, which has already approved a more hardline version of the bill. For whatever reason, Murkowski said she hopes that the House — which has already passed harsher cuts without the special treatment for Alaska — will somehow salvage the bill.
“We do not have a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination,” Murkowski told reporters. “My hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet. And I would hope that we would be able to actually do what we used to do around here, which is work back and forth, between the two bodies, that’s going to be better for the people of this country and more particularly for the people of Alaska.”
Her half-hearted gesture at a bygone era of politics didn’t sit well with pretty much anyone. Alaska’s social media channels were filled with scorching takes on Murkowski, calling her claimed support of Medicaid and groups like Planned Parenthood, which will be hit particularly hard by the legislation, as hollow lip service. Several said they felt betrayed by the lawmaker who has long framed herself as a centrist focused on the well-being of Alaska.
In her prepared statement, she was similarly contrite about her vote on the bill, blaming the rushed process, which she could have stopped by voting ‘no,’ for the harm it would cause to many millions of Americans.
“But, let’s not kid ourselves. This has been an awful process — a frantic rush to meet an artificial deadline that has tested every limit of this institution. While we have worked to improve the present bill for Alaska, it is not good enough for the rest of our nation — and we all know it,” she said. “My sincere hope is that this is not the final product. This bill needs more work across chambers and is not ready for the President’s desk. We need to work together to get this right.”
In the House, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., criticized Murkowski’s hope that the House would salvage the bill as being recklessly detached from reality.
“I mean, my question to her is if you really believe that, then why the hell did you vote for this bill? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s a dereliction of your duty as a United States senator and as a representative for the people of Alaska,” he said. “When was the last time this current House of Representatives fixed or solved anything? Where have you been, Sen. Murkowski? This Republican House is dysfunction on steroids.”
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
