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Senator Lisa Murkowski Bows Down to Donald [1]
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Date: 2025-07-02
GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski– It’s All AboutTax Breaks for Alaskan Whalers and Demagogue Donald, Not Her Fellow Americans July 2, 2025
Again, no matter how much they criticize, carp, and complain about how bad Demagogue Donald’s legislative plans are, in the end, GOP legislators do what they always do–they fall in line. They vote en masse for any President with an “R” after his name. The latest example? Trump’s “Great Big Beautiful (no, Ugly) Bill.” After this horrible tax cut bill had passed the House on a GOP party-line vote, on July 1, 2025, the Senate, also with a GOP majority, similarly fell in line and like lemmings, jumped off the legislative cliff to blindly do King Donald’s bidding. Yes, many of them had their doubts about this legislation, but found voting for Donald more important than helping the American people. On the eve of the July 4th holiday, when our country courageously declared its independence from King George III in 1776, in 2025, our cowardly GOP-led Houses in Congress did not have the will to say “NO” to King Donald I. In the Senate, with Vice President President Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, that upper chamber voted 51-50 to pass this bill to slash taxes and social safety net programs just to give Donald a major victory heading into the July 4th weekend. Only three Republicans, Maine’s Susan Collins, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, and Kentucky’s Rand Paul joined all the Democrats in voting against it.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/7/01/us/trump-bill-news
This Trump-pushed bill will, according to analysts, not only add at least $3.3 trillion to the nation’s debt over the next 10 years, but also, reduce the amount of tax revenue the country collects for decades. The U.S. debt, already at levels economists find alarming, would only accelerate as the bill shaves down the country’s main source of money. And get this. Although this bill was passed by the reconciliation process , which requires just a majority vote, to avoid the filibuster and includes the requirement that bills cannot add to the debt for more than a decade, the GOP disregarded that key rule. Instead, it used “fake accounting” or a gimmick to argue that the $3.8 trillion costs that extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts are actually zero, and, therefore, can continue indefinitely.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/us/politics/republican-policy-bill-perilous-fiscal-path.html
Where on earth did “Team Red” learn its math?
And in order to offset these tax cuts, this Trump-GOP bill will cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. It will also make big changes to Medicaid, the joint federal and state program that provides health care to roughly 70 million low-income, elderly, and disabled Americans. Early estimates suggest, according to National Public Radio (NPR), that around 11 million people could lose coverage under the GOP bill.
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/01/nx-s1-5450367/senate-republicans-trump-tax-bill-medicaid
One of the key GOP Senators who helped get this bill through the Senate is Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski. Normally a GOP moderate, she was heavily lobbied by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) as well as VP Vance. In return for her vote on this regressive tax cut bill, Murkowski got breaks for her state in this legislation. These included favorable changes for AK on Medicaid, nutritional assistance, and adding a tax break for whaling captains.
https://kesq.com/news/national-politics/cnn/-us-politics/2025/07/01/carveouts-for-alaska-and-tax-breaks-for-whalers-how-lisa-murkowski-got-to-yes-on…
Yes, you read that right. Sen. Murkowski cared more about helping a few hundred Alaskan whaling captains than millions of Americans who would be hurt by major social safety net cuts. Meet Sen. Murkowski.
Fourth-term Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski (68) is now the Last Frontier State’s senior senator. Ketchikan, AK native Lisa Murkowski has a distinguished political background. She is the daughter of Frank Murkowski. Her father was elected U.S. Senator from Alaska and later became that state’s governor.
https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com ,2024, National Journal,2023, p. 82. Lisa Murkowski obtained her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University in 1980, the year her father was first elected to the Senate. She received her law degree in 1985 from Willamette University in Oregon. She settled in Anchorage, AK and served as a district court attorney and then went into private practice. In 1998, Murkowski was elected to the Alaska state House. She ran for that office because of her concern for oil and timber, key AK economic mainstays.
https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com ,2024, National Journal, 2023, p.82.
In the AK legislature, Murkowski opposed some of her father’s views. Her father was against new taxes. In the legislature, daughter Lisa displayed political independence from her Governor Dad. When AK had a $1.1 billion budget shortfall, Lisa won the fight to enact a bill making her state the one with the highest alcohol tax in the country. In 2002, she was renominated in the primary against a conservative challenger by just 57 votes. Still, she later went on to become AK’s House majority leader. She served in the AK House from 1998-2002.
https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com , 2024, National Journal, 2023, pp. 81-82. In 2002, when her father was elected Governor and had to leave the Senate, he compiled a list of Alaskan politicians whom he felt could take his place in the Senate. One of them was Sarah Palin. After looking at the group he had on this list, Lisa’s father finally decided that his daughter, originally not in this group, was the best choice. It was the only time in U.S. history that a governor had appointed his/her child to the U.S. Senate. Although some Alaskans made fun of this choice, Lisa pointed out that she differed from her Dad on issues and that the two of them didn’t talk to each other about political matters. In 2004, with the nepotism issue a big matter hanging over her, she narrowly won election 49%-46% while in her ultra-“Red” state, W Bush won by 25 points.
https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com , 2024, National Journal, 2023, p.83.
In 2010, a Palin-backed candidate defeated Murkowski in the primary by two points. Murkowski, however, pursued a write-in-campaign and with the help of Democratic votes won a three-way contest. She became the second Senator in American history to win a write-in-campaign.
https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com , 2024, National Journal, 2023, p.83. In 2016, Murkowski handily won re-election by 15.20 points. In 2022, however, she won re-election by 7.40 points.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Murkowski
In the Senate, Murkowski is considered a rare GOP moderate. In 2022, she received a 100% rating from the ACLU. Labor’s AFL-CIO gave her a 59% score. Yes, she voted for permitting oil and gas drilling in AK in the ANWAR (Arctic National Wildlife Reserve). However, Senator Murkowski voted with Dem. President Obama over 70% of the time. Murkowski was voted, according to the NY Times, as the second-most liberal GOPer. Along with the late GOP Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Susan Collins (R-ME) they were the key to defeating the GOP proposal in 2017 to repeal Obamacare. She additionally voted against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Ct. in 2018. However, in 2020, she voted in favor of Amy Coney Barrett’s High Court nomination. Pro-choice Murkowski was “shocked” that Barrett voted to overrule “Roe v. Wade” in the “Dobbs” decision and said it “rocked her confidence in the Court.” After the “Dobbs” decision, Murkowski proposed legislation to legalize abortion nationwide, legislation that stalled in the Senate. Murkowski was just one of three GOPers to confirm Biden’s nominee, Black woman Ketanji Brown Jackson, to the Supreme Court. She was one of 7 GOPers to vote with the Democrats to convict Donald after he was impeached for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 D.C. Capitol riot. She did not like Donald’s nasty 2020 re-election campaign and said that she wanted him “out” of office after Jan. 6, 2021. Still, according to the “FiveThirtyEight” post, Murkowski voted with Trump 72.6% of the time as of Jan. 2021.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Murkowski ,
https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com , 2024, National Journal, 2023, pp. 84-85.
However, despite her fairly moderate/independent record, Sen. Murkowski has strongly stated that she would remain a registered Republican and had “no desire to move over to the Democratic side of the aisle.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Murkowski
Her awful vote to back Donald’s “Big Ugly Bill,” a major part of his agenda, says it all. Tax breaks for Alaskan whaling captains influencing her decision is certainly not a part of the Democratic agenda, but fits quite well with GOP tax cut ideology. GOP “moderates” like Murkowski, in the end, have to bow before Donald and kiss his ring when he calls his “Team Red” followers to fall into line. In the end, it is loyalty to Donald, not the American people that drives GOP House and Senate legislators of all ideological stripes. Do not be surprised at all if despite all their grumbling about Trump’s tax bill, the House and Senate fall in line in a conference committee and give their monarchical leader this terrible legislation.
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