Lisa Murkowski cements her legacy

The "moderate" Republican bemoaned her "hard" decision-- but she took the easy way out

After voting in favor of the single most inhumane piece of legislation in modern American history - a budget that strips healthcare away from 17 million Americans, takes food assistance away from 3 million Americans, eliminates school meal access for more than 18 million kids, adds nearly $4 trillion to national debt, sends electricity costs surging, and substantially raises health care premiums for older adults with ACA coverage, all to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans - Senator Murkowski released a statement that read, in part:

"Let's not kid ourselves. This has been an awful process— a frantic rush to meet an artificial deadline that has tested every limit of this institution. While we have worked to improve the present bill for Alaska, it is not good enough for the rest of our nation— and we all know it. My sincere hope is that this is not the final product. This bill needs more work across chambers and is not ready for the President's desk. We need to work together to get this right."

As far as Murkowski’s hope “that this is not the final product” is concerned, perhaps she was unaware, but this was the vote. This wasn’t a committee markup hearing; she voted on the final passage of the bill. And she voted in favor. Is there a chance that the House makes changes and the bill comes back to the Senate? Sure. But as far as she’s concerned, she gave her final stamp of approval to this bill— in its current form. I’m not sure whether she’s pretending that this was some preliminary vote out of ignorance or deception, but she doesn’t get to lament the passage of a bill that she literally voted to pass. If she didn’t like it - and I hope you’re sitting down for this - she shouldn’t have voted for it.

But she did, and she rationalizes her decision by offering a few examples of how she “improved the present bill for Alaska.” It’s true that she was able to secure some tribal exemptions on cuts to food assistance, a tax break for the fishing industry, and $50 billion to offset hospital closures (which frankly will do nothing in the face of over a trillion dollars in healthcare cuts contained within the same bill). How those crumbs justify trading away Americans’ healthcare, food assistance, energy costs and the deficit is beyond me— but I suppose she derives some pride knowing that she gets to pretend that she “delivered” for her state. Something tells me that’s cold comfort for the 40,000 Alaskans who will lose their healthcare as the result of this bill’s passage.

I think back to July of 2017. John McCain was in very much the same position as Lisa Murkowski found herself in today. He would’ve been the deciding vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a decision that would’ve kicked 30 million Americans off of their healthcare, not dissimilar to how nearly 20 million will lose Medicaid coverage as the result of this current bill. Trump pressured McCain, Republicans pressured McCain, and when it came time to vote, this is what happened:

McCain was capable of putting country over party in that moment. I don’t think Mitch McConnell’s Republican Senate conference was on any planet any less partisan than today’s Senate conference, and yet even then, McCain was able to consider the impacts on millions upon millions of Americans. This is not to lionize John McCain, but I can certainly acknowledge that he showed heroism in that moment. And yet when Lisa Murkowski had the opportunity to do the same thing, to cement her place in the history books as someone who could preserve healthcare for tens of millions and make sure that millions of children don’t go to bed hungry, she allowed herself to be bought out with a few comical carveouts. A whaling captain tax deduction. In a party that was already hurting for heroes, this represents a new low for the GOP. Lincoln’s party once fought to free the slaves, now reduced to screwing over the nation’s poorest and most vulnerable in order to heap a tax cut onto some of the wealthiest people who have ever walked the earth. Lisa Murkowski cast the deciding vote to codify the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in American history.

As if it’s not already obvious, no, I am not sympathetic to Lisa Murkowski’s plight. I don’t empathize when she laments the difficulty of her vote. What she did was not difficult; what she did was easy. Caving to Trump isn’t courageous. It’s not hard. You don’t get credit for doing the hard thing when you didn’t actually do the hard thing. If Murkowski wants sympathy, she should try doing something to actually earn it.