Murkowski: BBBribes for Alaska. The Rest of America can Drop Dead

The taunt is more than half-a-century old but resonates through the U.S. Capitol today. The role of “moderate” Republicans, Sen. Eugene McCarthy quipped, was to follow Nixon into battle and shoot the wounded.

Substitute Trump and you get the Republicans’ role today. They are the enablers, none more than Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who cast the decisive 50th Senate vote for the “Big Beautiful” bill. Vice President J.D. Vance then broke the tie. Murkowski was critical before and after the vote. I received a statement from her: “while we have improved the present bill for Alaska, it is not good enough for the rest of our nation — and we all know it.”

Outside the Senate chamber, she further disparaged what she had just rescued: “I’ve struggled mightily with the bill’s impact on the most vulnerable in this country. I needed help and worked to get that every single day. Did I get everything I wanted?  Absolutely not.”

She owes Trump nothing. He tried to defeat her two years ago, flying to Alaska to tout her GOP opponent and claim she’d done nothing for the state. She was rescued by votes from Democrats, Alaska Natives and the bush. Meanwhile, rural residents in the 49th State stand to lose most, notably in Medicaid cuts.

Murkowski is hoping the bill will be improved as it goes back to the House. The much greater prospect, of course, is that the screwed-up priorities will do lasting damage to our  country. By enacting “the largest cuts in social safety net in United States history” — Sen. Maria Cantwell’s words — it cements in place an oligarchical society at the expense of the middle class and poor.

“The rest of us will suffer for it: The U.S. will be a weaker, sicker and poorer country because of this bill,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon.

There’s also deep damage to democracy, which Senate Republicans could have prevented. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell privately detests Trump and blamed him for the January 6th insurrection that trashed the U.S. Capitol. Yet, having supplied the evidence, McConnell voted against conviction after the House impeached Trump. Conviction would have made Trump ineligible to run again.

What a difference from 75 years ago, when GOP Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine delivered her “declaration of conscience” against the demagoguery of Sen. Joe McCarthy. A half dozen other Republicans spoke up and half the caucus voted yea on the resolution to censure “Tailgunner Joe.” (The always-worried Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, voted against Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.)

So what did Murkowski get for casting the decisive vote for a measure that will increase the national debt by $3 trillion (according to the Congressional Budget Office) while taking Medicaid coverage away from 17 million Americans?

Big Beautiful contains several sweeteners — “lulu’s in the East Coast phrase — made specific to Alaska. It provides for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and National Petroleum Reserve, although North Slope areas are warming at several times the rate for the rest of our planet. It anticipates revenues from those drillings, although major oil companies have shied away from Refuge lease sales.

The bill contains a $50 billion fund to build rural hospitals and clinics, although cuts and complications to Medicaid will close rural hospitals across the “lower 48.” Alaska gets more leverage in running SNAP, the federal food stamp program.  Big Beautiful retains subsidies for fossil fuel, including a lulu for the coal industry, but Murkowski managed to get removed an excise tax on renewable energy.

A dying Sen. John McCain saved the Affordable Care Act with a famous thumbs-down standing in the well of the Senate. He defied party leadership, and the spiteful Trump. Murkowski huddled with McConnell, as shown on C-Span, and then voted Aye. McCain was putting country first. As to Murkowski, in her words, “I tried to take care of Alaska interests. But I know that many parts of the country there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged.”

Sen. Cantwell, a Murkowski friend and sometime collaborator, put it best. The House of Representatives should reject Big Beautiful, clearing the path for a bipartisan budget bill that is fiscally responsible and won’t burden working families.

Such is possible with a modest use of intelligence and a backbone. Fifty Republicans in the Senate showed they had neither.

This article also appears in Cascadia Advocate.