With Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s help, Senate Republicans passed a sprawling budget reconciliation bill that contains much of President Trump’s domestic policy agenda.
Murkowski said it was one of the hardest votes she's ever taken and that she's hoping the bill will be changed further before Congress sends it to the president's desk.
"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," Murkowski said in an emailed statement.
The bill's passage followed intense negotiations overnight between Murkowski and Senate leaders, aimed at retooling the bill to overcome her objections to removing benefits from Alaskans on Medicaid and food assistance.
“Did I get everything that I wanted? Absolutely not,” she told reporters outside the Senate chamber.
Murkowski said she decided to vote yes because Republicans made adequate changes to rural health care and food assistance.
She cited a new $50 billion fund for rural hospitals and clinics. She also got more flexibility for Alaska in SNAP, the federal food assistance program.
Only three Senate Republicans joined Democrats in voting against the bill: Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. The vote was 51-50 after Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaker.
Murkowski, like Collins, was one of the “Medicaid moderates” who didn’t want to see big cuts to the government-funded health care coverage for low- and middle-income Americans. Senate leaders crafted a slew of special Alaska carveouts to win Murkowski’s support.
Murkowski also held out to support better tax treatment for wind and solar energy. The final bill dropped a proposed excise tax on clean energy.
The bill also includes new oil lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska. Murkowski has championed those for years, as has Sen. Dan Sullivan, who also voted for the bill.
The Congressional Budget Office said the Senate bill would add more than $3 trillion to the budget deficit, which causes heartburn for some conservative Republicans, particularly in the House.
Sullivan, though, is among the Republicans who said the biggest cost of the bill — continuing the 2017 tax cuts — shouldn't be counted. They were set to expire but "we're pretty sure that the tax cuts were going to continue," Sullivan told reporters Tuesday.
Looking at it that way, he said, the bill "actually has historic savings of about roughly $1.6 trillion, right?"
The bill goes next to the House, where a different version passed in May without a vote to spare.
The House could pass the Senate bill, which would be the quickest option and might allow Trump to sign it on his July 4 deadline. Lawmakers from both chambers could also meet in a conference committee to work out the differences.
Any changes would have to be approved again in the Senate.
