Murkowski's Faux Morality
A Compass Slender Enough to Pass the Needle's Eye
On July 2, Senator Lisa Murkowski cast the deciding “yea” vote for President Trump’s OBBB,1 which sent the bill back to the House of Representatives where it was passed swiftly the next day, readying it for Trump’s signature to make it the law of the land on the happy Fourth of July.
After the Senate vote, a reporter caught up with the high-profile senator and asked her to respond to a colleague who said she had sold out the nation to get a few deals for Alaska. Dramatically, she held fire, face drawn and grave as death, until the reporter excused his question: “I didn’t say it. That’s what Senator Paul2 said.”
Without dropping for a moment her histrionic look of severity, she defended her vote splendidly considering the hopeless circumstances of rebutting an accusation all too widely recognized as true, culpable, and unforgivable. Besides dramatic, Murkowski’s answer seemed well rehearsed. She feigned shock at her colleague’s disapproval of her vote3 and appeared to be sincerely wounded by the accusation, while projecting righteousness to the core. She was also poised, as if savoring the chance to roll out her defense on the national stage. Though her hand was bloodied up to the wrist, she seemed sure her performance would quash any doubt. Certainly, she had poked around in that dying body and plucked out an organ or two to take home to her state. What senator worth their salt wouldn’t? she implied. Well, unfortunately, too few. These past few weeks, we’ve witnessed our congressional gallery of gory rogues struggle to explain why OBBB is anything but wicked, with little success.
Senator Murkowski was a proud and defiant warrior, boasting about getting tidbits for Alaska.
Murkowski did sell out. She got a few waivers for Alaska that the bill laid burdensomely on other states. But that, she defended, was her purpose as Alaska’s senator, to fight for Alaskans every single day, and so she had done this time. She was a proud and defiant warrior, boasting about getting tidbits for Alaska. It was sad to hear:
“Do I like this bill? No. Because I tried to take care of Alaska’s interests, but I know that in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill. I don’t like that. I don’t like the fact that we moved through an artificial deadline, an artificial timeline, to produce something, to meet a deadline rather than to actually try to produce the best bill for the country. But when I saw the direction that this is going — you know, you can either say, ‘I don’t like it,’ and not try to help my state, or you can roll up your sleeves.”
Delivered with steely conviction, her answer was immensely inadequate. She knew Americans in many parts of the country would be hurt by the bill, but she voted for it. She realized that Trump’s high-pressure, arbitrary deadline had manipulated her and and her fellow senators into coming up with a hasty, shoddy bill based entirely on Trump’s priorities, but she bowed to that pressure, participated in producing a terrible bill covering all of those priorities, then voted for it.
“. . . when I saw the direction that this is going.” In what direction might that have been? She does not specify.
“You can either say, ‘I don’t like it,’ and not try to help my state, or you can roll up your sleeves.” Roll up your sleeves and do what, my dear? You rolled down your sleeves the moment you voted yes.
She came away from that fight with booty, but what skill does that take when you know you’re the last holdout in the conflict?
Senator Murkowski had been scrapping in the backwoods while the war raging in the adjacent field was lost. Did she not hear the clashing there? She came away from that fight with booty, but what skill does that take when you know you’re the last holdout in the conflict? You get whatever concessions you like when your capitulation will decide the war.
In exchange for her war prizes, Murkowski cast the deciding vote in the Senate to pass OBBB. In doing so, she abandoned the other forty-nine states to the bootheel of Trump’s domestic policies. Thanks to her vote, President Trump will sign into law a bill that will pour tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into domestic surveillance technology, personnel, and detainment centers while cutting hundreds of billions from healthcare and nutrition programs for the less affluent. The bill also allows the federal government to raise the nation’s debt ceiling by $5 trillion to ensure national solvency despite extending Trump’s 2018 tax cuts that will increase the federal deficit by trillions of dollars, which is why the debt ceiling must be increased.
Police states and national impoverishment cast long shadows, even as far as Alaska. But we won’t disturb the senator from the Last Frontier with further rebuke. She has exhausted herself trying to justify the primitive morality of fighting for her own turf. While some might suggest American turf extends beyond Alaska, the observation is beside the point. Murkowski wasn’t fighting for Alaska in this scuffle, but for herself. Once it became clear that her vote would decide passage or failure of the bill, she landed in Trump’s crosshairs. To escape them, she voted for the bill. Simple. But that mustn’t become known. To disguise her pusillanimity, she fiercely argues that she had been weighing the deep moral issues of the bill. But the issues of the bill weren’t deep; they were in-your-face wrong.
Certainly, it is an outrage that any legislator in today’s Congress must risk potential ruin when exposed to the harrowing wrath of a displeased President Trump. But Murkowski’s excuse that she voted for a bill to gain a small advantage for Alaska while devastating the rest of the country cannot be let to pass. Surely Alaska is not so far removed from the rest of the country as to feel itself exempted from the illuminating adage: We must all hang together or we shall all hang separately.
One Big Beautiful Bill was so christened by House Speaker Mike Johnson in commemoration of President Trump’s brilliant nickname for it.
Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky.
How could she be? That reaction was clearly disingenuous. But she followed through flawlessly.