Despite Lisa Murkowskis’s agreements, Alaska’s inhabitants will suffer under Trump’s tax bill

Washington-La Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaaska) includes how devastating the tax bill of President Donald Trump will be for millions of people throughout the country.

She said it right after voting to approve it on Tuesday.

“This has been a horrible process,” he said in A long statementlamenting both the territory of the bill and the rush to do so. “While we have worked to improve the current bill for Alaska, it is not good enough for the rest of our nation, and we all know.”

Murkowski had the opportunity to kill this bill. With the vote of the Senate stuck in 49-50, he hesitated how to vote for hours, during Monday and until Tuesday morning, while the Republican colleagues surrounded her on the floor of the Senate and subjected her to an intense and exhausting lobbying campaign to support him. Finally he did, overcoming the final vote at 50-50 and clearing the way for vice president JD Vance to break the tie.

This legislation, Trump’s internal policy package, will inflict a lot of pain and cruelty to many people. It offers immigration authorities $ 150 billion to increase Trump’s mass deportation efforts, with more money for detention centers and more incentives to stop American children with undocumented parents. Pata to millions of low -income health people. It takes away the food assistance of millions of people and families. In exchange for his more than $ 1 billion in cuts to Medicaid, he gives a strong tax exemption to the richest Americans.

Murkowski seemed to have the buyer’s remorse almost immediately after voting for it. In his statement on Tuesday, he said strangely that he wanted to continue working on the bill, even when the Republican leaders have been running to get to Trump on Friday, leaving little or no possibility of more changes once he left the Senate.

“My sincere hope is that this is not the final product,” he said. “This bill needs more work in the cameras and is not ready for the president’s desk.”

So why Alaska’s Republican voted for this? His reasoning is as cynical as a sign of how broken our policy has become: he could add language to the bill that protects its state from suffering that the bill will inflict the rest of the country.

In exchange for his vote for the bill, Murkowski obtained a two -year delay in the cuts to federal dollars of his state of the supplementary nutrition A strange incentive For states with the highest error rates to pay their recipients.

She negotiated another $ 25 billion for a fund now of $ 50 billion for rural hospitals, many of which will have difficulty surviving the deep medical cuts of the bill. She got a benefit to Whaling captains of Alaska. He obtained more drilling leases for his state. He delayed the termination of wind and solar tax credits, which Alaska benefits, and stripped a new renewable energy project tax.

“I addressed the interests of my state,” Murkowski told journalists after Tuesday’s vote. “I will continue doing that and I will not put excuses to do that.”

The point is that their constituents will still suffer under this bill.

Bill Clark through Getty Images

How many 46,000 Alaska residents They run the risk of losing their health insurance due to hard work requirements and frequent eligibility checks for Medicaid. Other 27,000 alaskanes They run the risk of losing food assistance due to New and hard work requirements In the SNAP program. The Murkowski advantages added to the invoice on these two fronts delay these successes so that they arise in one or two years, but do not stop them.

When Medicaid cuts enter into force, it will exert great pressure on the State’s medical care system, with hospitals and clinics potentially obliged to reduce services, increase the costs of private insured patients or simply close. Four rural hospitals in Alaska, which comprise 40% of rural state hospitals with available data, serve high concentrations of Medicaid patients.

Murkowski negotiated more money for the rural hospital fund mentioned above of $ 50 billion to help with this, but is not even close to compensating the more than $ 1 billion of cuts from the invoice to Medicaid. The rural areas will lose $ 155 billion in federal dollars of Medicaid under the invoice, for A KFF analysisan independent health policy research group. It is estimated that Alaska gets Around $ 280 million from the background of the Rural Hospital for five years.

Another “super worrying” aspect of the bill for Alaska residents is related to the State that has no level 1 trauma center, said Liz Pancootti, managing director of policies and defense of land collaboration, a group of progressive economic policy experts.

When Alaska inhabitants need level 1 trauma care, which is the highest level of trauma care for patients with serious injuries, they are transported by medical evacuation to hospitals in the state of Washington, Pancootti said. Murkowski could have obtained the followers of Trump’s officials that hospitals in their state can access the Fund of the Rural Hospital of $ 50 billion to compensate for their Medicaid cuts, but those guarantees will probably not apply to hospitals in the state of Washington.

“Who knows if that state, who has a Democratic governor and Democratic senators, will get money from the Rural Hospital Stabilization Fund,” he said. “Probably not. And also, they are not rural. Their centers are on the coast or in the cities.”

Pancootti said that “presumably” will be the secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, making the calls in which states can take advantage of the background of the Rural Hospital.

“Why would you give money to the governor of Washington for Alaska?” She asked. “Maybe Murkowski can present that case, but it seems that there is no guarantee.”

“Who knows if that state, who has a Democratic governor and Democratic senators, will get money from the Rural Hospital Stabilization. Probably not.”

– LIZ PANCOTTI, Groundwork Collaborative

The state budget will also receive great success, since Alaska, like all the other states, will now have to pay for Medicaid. The bill was addressed to Trump’s desktop would result in the loss of Murkowski’s state. At least $ 2 billion In federal funds of Medicaid during the next decade, according to KFF.

State legislators will be pressed to compensate for these losses making cuts a priorities financed by the State, such as education or tax increase. They can also begin to make decisions about what types of so -called “Medicaid Optional Services” will no longer finance, to reduce costs. That could no longer cover dental care, for example, or home care.

It is not as if the Democrats in Alaska care about the damage that this bill will make to the State.

“Alaska cannot afford to lose medical care funds,” Bryce Edgmon, the speaker of the State Representatives Chamber, and Cathy Giessel, leader of the Republican majority of the state’s Senate, last week in A New York Times opinion piece Entitled “Alaska cannot survive this bill.”

“The work requirements instituted in Medicaid are unsustainable for the rural areas of Alaska, with many communities that face limited broadband access and job opportunities,” they wrote. “Alaska inhabitants who lose medical care coverage will be forced to delay care until it is an emergency. In despair, they will end up in emergency rooms, the most expensive place to receive attention, resulting in greater premiums for private sector employers and involuntary finances that will probably force rural hospitals to close.”

“The reality is that the majority of Medicaid inhabitants are already working,” Alaska legislators said “and these provisions simply create more barriers and bureaucracy.”

Murkowski and his partner Republican Senator of Alaska, Dan Sullivan, knew that Trump’s tax bill would have this effect in their state when they voted to approve it. That is why they tried three times separated, without success, to isolate Alaska from the pain of the medical cuts of the bill in the frantic final hours of the Senate debate, according to an employee of the Senate Finance Committee familiar with the final efforts of the senators in the bill.

In view of the journalists who observe the floor of the Senate, the assistants to the Senators of Alaska were scolded with the Senate parliamentarian, also known as the arbitrator of rules, to try to add language to the bill in the last minute to increase the Federal Medicaid party for the states with the highest levels of poverty under federal guidelines. Alaska and Hawaii Direct that list. But the parliamentarian said that the change did not comply with the rules of the Senate budget and denied it.

Then, the senators tried again, this time when proposing a new language to increase the Federal Medicaid party for five states with the lower population densities. Alaska heads that list, together with Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. The parliamentarian said that this also violated the rules of the Senate budget and rejected them.

In a third and last effort to protect Alaska from the pain of the bill, assistants to senators tried to add more money to the bill for State community browser services. These programs help connect people in various communities, particularly tribal communities in Alaska, with the resources they need. The parliamentarian also scratched this plan.

The fact that the Republican Senators of Alaska were fighting on the Senate’s floor in the 11th hour to do something, anything, to protect their status from the medical cuts of the bill, says a lot about how bad they wanted to avoid the effects of the project of the Republican party law.

A spokeswoman for Murkowski did not respond to a request for comments on why he voted for the bill knowing that, even with their additional advantages for Alaska, it would still harm many of the most vulnerable residents of their state, regardless of millions of people outside their state.

Who knows if Murkowski could have collapsed the Trump characteristic tax package forever if he had voted against him? Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), That he was opposed, said he would have supported him if the leaders of the Republican party changed a provision related to the government’s legal indebtedness limit. In that scenario, with Murkowski and Paul exchanging votes, the bill would still have approved the Senate but without Murkowski’s treats for his state in him.

“When I saw the direction that this was going, you can say: ‘I don’t like it’, and not try to help my condition, or you can roll up the sleeves,” said Oa Ryan Noble from NBC, shortly after the bill clarified the Senate.

It is not that that justifies Murkowski’s vote, or anyone’s, for such a cruel bill. The reality is that practically all the Republicans of the Senate and the Chamber voted for this legislation, and everyone knows that they will demolish the poorest and poorest people in their states or districts. What distinguishes Murkowski from the rest is that he really weighed on her.

In A Tuesday interview With Alaska reporters, not long after having cast their vote, he tried to talk about “good things” in the bill, citing their tax cuts, their fiscal prosecutors and their new funds for the Coast Guard. Again he criticized his hurried process and said that “it is not a perfect bill for any stretch of imagination.”

Murkowski said nothing about being the decisive vote of the Senate about the legislation that kick 12 million people Out of your health coverage and eliminates food aid from Millions more low -income people and families. Instead, he emphasized his commitment to save his voters from some of the pain he had just voted to impose on everyone else.

“I needed to make sure that Alaska’s interests were represented,” he said. “I think I did, I think I did it well for the State, in terms of trying to get these accommodations.”