Senate Republicans Sneak Wild Rule Into Budget to Win Over Murkowski

The fate of the centerpiece legislation of President Trump’s agenda—the wildly unpopular, social safety net–slashing, “big, beautiful bill”—may rest in the hands of moderate Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. 

In recent days, the Senate has been seeking to buy off Murkowski’s vote to win over the key GOP holdout on the bill, which would be potentially ruinous to Murkowski’s home state, to say nothing of the other 49. 

To court Murkowski, the Senate exempted Alaska from a provision shifting greater portions of the cost to administer the Supplemental National Assistance Program, or food stamps, onto the states.

The Senate sought to add a version of the carve-out Monday night—which included just Alaska and Hawaii, evidently to pretend it wasn’t a carve-out for a single state—but it didn’t pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian, who has been winnowing away nonbudgetary provisions of the bill (which cannot be included if it is to pass as a budget reconciliation, which requires just a simple majority, rather than the impossible 60 votes that would be needed to break a filibuster). 

Early Tuesday morning, however, Senate Republicans succeeded in getting the SNAP carve-out in the bill—by having it apply to states with the highest error rates.

Several Democratic lawmakers have expressed their disapproval of the bribe. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, for example, tweeted, “The most absurd example of the hypocrisy of the Republican bill: they have now proposed delaying SNAP cuts FOR TWO YEARS ONLY FOR STATES  with the highest error rates just to bury their help for Alaska: AK, DC, FL, GA, MD, MA, NJ, NM, NY, OR. They are rewarding errors.”

It’s unclear whether this’ll be enough to win Murkowski’s vote. Republicans failed to include other provisions to sweeten the pot—or, rather, make it less sour—such as one that would have increased the federal share of Medicaid spending for Alaska.

Summing up the absurdity of the situation aptly, journalist Sam Stein of The Bulwark wrote on X: “So basically, the future of this bill comes down to whether one Senator (Murkowksi) feels comfortable enough that she has shielded her state from the worst parts of this bill that the other 49 states (give or take a few) will have to endure?”

Stein also observed that Murkowski, in 2017, told the press she would be unswayed by attempts to buy her vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. 

Murkowski had said at the time, “Let’s just say that they do something that’s so Alaska-specific just to, quote, ‘get me.’ … Then you have a nationwide system that doesn’t work. That then comes crashing down and Alaska’s not able to kind of keep it together on its own.” We’ll soon know whether she maintains this noble resolve.