Murkowski got to yes on $3.3T megabill thanks to spending for Alaska

Republican leaders in the Senate convinced Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to vote in favor of President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” with a series of spending initiatives for her home state.

Negotiations over the bill stretched on to the eleventh hour before the bill was passed on Tuesday, with Murkowski opposing the legislation until she secured clean energy tax credits, assurances of oil drilling leases and other priorities for her state. She was seen walking around the Senate floor wearing a blanket and holding a notepad in the later hours of the Senate’s “vote-a-rama.”

“I held my head up and made sure that the people of Alaska are not forgotten in this, but I think that there is more that needs to be done, and I’m not done,” Murkowski told reporters after the vote. “I am going to take a nap, though.”

“What I tried to do was to ensure that my colleagues understood what that means when you live in an area where there are no jobs, it is not a cash economy,” she added. “And so I needed help, and I worked to get that every single day.”

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune may have secured Murkowski’s vote earlier if not for the Senate parliamentarian, who struck down several deal sweeteners aimed at Alaska. The Senate passed Trump’s bill under the reconciliation process, which requires only a simple majority. The parliamentarian holds the authority to determine whether certain line items fall outside the scope of budget reconciliation, therefore requiring a 60-vote majority.

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Some of the sweeteners did make it through, however, including allowing a temporary delay on cost hikes for food assistance programs in both Hawaii and Alaska. Murkowski also secured the removal of a planned tax on solar and wind energy projects.

“[Murkowski] is somebody who studies the issues really, really hard and well,” Thune told Politico. “I’m just grateful that at the end of the day she concluded what the rest of us did … which is that it was the right direction for the future of our country.”

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While Trump’s bill has cleared the Senate, it now faces an uncertain future in the House of Representatives, where many conservative lawmakers have criticized the lack of spending cuts.

House Speaker Mike Johnson led Republicans in passing a procedural “rule” vote to tee up the legislation overnight on Wednesday. The speaker can only afford to lose three Republican votes and still pass the bill. Two have already confirmed their opposition to passing the Senate version of the bill: Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Rep. Ralh Norman, R-S.C.

House members will begin the debate process at roughly 9:00 a.m.