Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski called her decisive vote for Trump’s megabill “agonizing,” recognizing that “there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill,” but insisted that she had done her best to secure special treatment for Alaska.
The series of carve-outs and promises from the Trump administration — called the Polar Payoff or Klondike Kickback among other names — range from oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic and additional funding for the state’s Coast Guard presence to a rural hospital fund aimed at offsetting the impact of kicking nearly 12 million Americans off Medicaid and a delay on forcing Alaska to pay tens of millions of dollars into the food stamps program.
Defenders called it making the best of a bad hand she was dealt, while critics called it a shameless payoff that tarnished the legacy of the allegedly process-focused lawmaker. It even generated a particularly tense moment when a reporter asked Murkowski in the wake of the vote if it was “a bailout for Alaska at the expense of the rest of the country.”
“My response is I have an obligation to the people of the state of Alaska,” she said after a 10-second delay where she stared at the reporter, “and I live up to that every single day.”
However, despite the crowing about protecting Alaska, many of those protections come with expiration dates that will ultimately expose the state and all but its wealthiest residents to the regressive policies contained in the bill.
One of the most significant changes under the megabill is a provision that requires states to contribute to the food costs of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more commonly known as food stamps, rather than just the administrative costs. The amount each state will be required to pay is based on the state’s error rate in issuing benefits, with a cap of 15% for states with the highest error rates, resulting in nearly $200 billion in shifted costs to the states.
Alaska, which has struggled chronically with accurately and on-time delivery of food stamp benefits, has the highest error rate of any state and would be liable for as much as $38 million annually — money it doesn’t have. Heading into the debate over Trump’s megabill, Alaska’s error rate was approximately 60%. That’s several times more than the next most-troubled state. Alaska had improved to a roughly 24% error rate in the most recent report, which is still about 10% higher than the next most error-prone state.
Murkowski’s big win here is that the penalties will only kick in for Alaska — and any other state with an error rate above 13% — starting in 2028. She told reporters in the wake of the vote that she hoped the issues, which largely stem from deep staffing cuts to the state’s welfare systems by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, will be resolved by then.
“I think that there were some decisions made with staffing by the governor that really kind of knocked us behind, and we’re paying for that now with a very high error rate, and it’s causing penalties,” Murkowski told Alaska reporters on Tuesday.
Advocates for the SNAP and Medicaid have been skeptical. At a town hall meeting before the vote, Rachael Miller, chief advocacy officer at the Food Bank of Alaska, said that the Department of Public Assistance was only just beginning to make meaningful progress on the backlog and expressed concern that the additional burdens would worsen an already difficult situation.
“If anyone has been following the Legislature, we know we have a difficult time finding money right now in this state, so this feels insurmountable,” she said. “This will make it exponentially more difficult for DPA to continue the progress they have made in reducing the SNAP backlog.”
While the state budgets will be on the hook for the program costs, advocates warn that it’ll be needy families who ultimately pay the price as programs are scaled back or cut altogether to keep budgets balanced. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed a measure that would have established a summer lunch program for low-income children due to uncertainty over federal funding.
Miller also said that the final cost to the state is likely to be even more than the $38 million, noting that it would cost the state an estimated $10 million to meet the administrative reporting requirements required by the megabill.
Medicaid, which will get onerous work requirements under the megabill, is also expected to become much more expensive to administer, while the work requirements and other hoops make it that much more difficult for low-income people to access.
Between the immediate and delayed impacts, Alaska will still feel much of the pain that Murkowski and the congressional delegation claimed they had spared the state from.
“There’s a lot of talk about how there’s Alaska carveouts or a Kodiak kickback or a polar bear provision,” said Rep. Genevieve Mina at a demonstration following Murkowski’s vote, according to Alaska Public Media. “These were not good deals for the state either. They’re provisions that would risk so much to the rest of the nation.”
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.
