Lisa Murkowski: A Profile in Cowardice
Advancing a bill she is encouraging the House to reject is logic so flawed, so backward, so broken, that only somebody who has spent 23 years as a United States Senator can think of it.
When you look up political cowardice in the dictionary, you will not find a photo of U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).
When given the chance to protect her Senate seat from Donald Trump, or do right by the American people, Murkowski chose to save herself by selling her vote on Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.
after she had convinced Senate leaders to change the bill to benefit her state and voted for the legislation, ensuring its passage, Murkowski said the last day had been “probably the most difficult and agonizing legislative 24-hour period that I have encountered.”
“And you all know,” she told reporters after the vote at midday Tuesday, “I’ve got a few battle scars underneath me.”
In a vacuum, one could argue that Murkowski did exactly what the Senate was designed to do; see Senators vote on behalf of the interests of their state governments. By obtaining exemptions for Alaska in new oil and gas lease sales in the state, tax breaks for Alaska fisheries and whalers, tribal exemptions for work requirements, and other Alaska-specific concessions, Murkowski protected the interests of her state and her constituents.
But that argument doesn’t hold water when the vote comes down to a 50-50 vote on a controversial piece of legislation that nobody read. And none of it stopped Murkowski from casting a vote for the Big, Beautiful Bill. A vote that Murkowski could easily have changed up until Vice-President Vance read the vote and used his vote to break the tie.
Murkowki’s vote was bad enough. But as soon as the bill passed the Senate, Murkowski was encouraging the House to vote down the bill she personally was responsible for passing in the Senate:
Republican Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski said Tuesday that despite voting in favor of the sweeping tax and spending package, she wants the House to return the "One Big Beautiful Bill" to the Senate for further work.
"My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we're not there yet," Murkowski told reporters today.
Murkowski's vote was pivotal in the Senate's razor-thin 51–50 passage of the bill. The Alaska senator had been the focus of intense lobbying by GOP leaders, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, to secure her support amid concerns over Medicaid cuts and food assistance reductions. The bill now heads to the House, where its future remains uncertain.
That logic is so flawed, so backward, so broken, that only somebody who has spent 23 years as a United States Senator could come up with it.
When we talk about problems with the way Washington legislates, THIS is the kind of crap that we are really talking about. Yes, a lot of the problem is the fact that Congress has abdicated so much of its policymaking responsibility to the Executive Branch. Yes, a lot of the problem is that Congress has forgotten how to conduct business in regular order and instead seems to be interested only in legislating with a proverbial gun pointed at their head from some real or artificial deadline.
But no procedural change can protect you from a careerist justifying nerfing the other 49 states to protect their own. And while there is some sort of bizarre honor in protecting the interests of your own constituents, that argument becomes moot when VOTING NO WOULD HAVE KILLED THE BILL IN THE FIRST PLACE.
I, too, hope that the House rejects the bill as passed by the Senate. But this entire process has been a blight on the Republic, a black eye on Washington, and potentially the thing that ejects the Republicans into the political wilderness. And Lisa Murkowski did no favors to her legacy, her state, or her country with her vote today. Let us hope that it is a footnote on this entire process and not the singular reason for American Retrenchment and Demise.