By: James Brooks, Alaska Beacon
The U.S. Senate continued nonstop debate on its major policy and budget bill Monday, as provisions affecting Alaska continued to be hotly debated.
Senators are advancing toward a vote expected as soon as Monday night, with some attempting to sway the vote of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
Murkowski is critical to the vote, because there are 53 Republicans in the U.S. Senate, and 50 are needed to pass the bill — dubbed the “Big, Beautiful Bill” by President Donald Trump.
Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Tom Tillis of North Carolina have indicated that they will vote against it. If Murkowski were to join them in opposition, it would leave Vice President J.D. Vance to cast the tie-breaking vote in favor.
If one other Republican were to also vote no, the bill would fail.
Senators are rushing to finish work ahead of the Fourth of July, an informal deadline preferred by the president.
In order to partially pay for tax cuts enacted during Trump’s first term, the bill proposes significant cuts to Medicaid spending and changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps.
Roughly 1 in 3 Alaskans receives health care through Medicaid, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank opposed to the big bill, estimated that 35,000 Alaskans could lose health insurance if the bill passes.
Republicans proposed $6.7 billion in additional Medicaid spending for Alaska to offset some of those cuts, but over the weekend, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that change violated the rules of the budget procedure being used to advance the bill.
Large numbers of Alaskans receive SNAP food aid from the federal government, and the bill would require states to pay for a share of that aid, which is currently fully funded by the federal government.
Alaska, which has repeatedly been scolded by the federal government for mistakes managing SNAP, would be required to pay as much as $37 million per year to keep food aid steady, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated.
Republican senators inserted a provision into the bill that would have temporarily exempted Alaska and Hawaii from having to pay into the program, but on Monday, the Senate parliamentarian seemed likely to nix that benefit as well.
In a weekend opinion column published in the New York Times, Alaska Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, and Alaska Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, urged Congress to reject the bill, saying it would be bad for Alaska. By phone on Monday, Giessel said her view had not changed since that column was published.
Other parts of the bill, geared toward Alaska, remained intact: a new tax exemption for Community Development Quota fishing groups and an increase in a federal tax deduction for Alaska whaling captains.
The bill contains more than $7 billion for Coast Guard icebreakers and $300 million to homeport a newly purchased civilian icebreaker commissioned into Coast Guard service. That icebreaker is slated to be homeported in Juneau.
On Monday, Murkowski was working to amend a section of the bill that threatens to deter low-cost solar and wind power projects that could reduce energy costs in Alaska.
Currently, federal law provides tax credits that incentivize those projects, but the new bill would eliminate those credits.
In addition, as of Monday afternoon, the bill contained a new excise tax on solar and energy projects placed into service after 2027 if they use parts from China and other prohibited foreign countries.
Almost all solar and wind projects use Chinese components because of their low cost and high quality.
Murkowski was seeking a gradual phaseout of those tax credits by allowing projects to collect them as long as they begin construction by 2027.
The bill would have significant effects on oil and gas drilling in Alaska. It mandates four new oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and it requires other sales in Cook Inlet and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
Seventy percent of rental and royalty payments from those sales would go to the state of Alaska, starting in 2034, up from 50 percent currently.
That’s down from a proposed share of 90%, which was in an earlier Senate version of the bill.
The revenue sharing is particularly important for the state because a growing proportion of North Slope oil production is coming from federal land, rather than state land, and most promising new oil finds in the North Slope are on federal land.
An earlier version of the bill proposed to ban states for 10 years from passing laws restricting AI computer software development. That’s now down to five years and has multiple exceptions.
In the Alaska Legislature, Anchorage Reps. Alyse Galvin and Andrew Gray had issued a statement asking the Senate to reconsider the 10-year ban.
A provision advancing development of the Ambler Road was rejected by the Senate parliamentarian, and Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has withdrawn a proposal to sell large amounts of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land.
Overall, independent analysts have found, the tax cuts within the bill will bring increased financial benefits for the wealthiest Alaskans, while the poorest Alaskans will be left worse off because their tax cuts do not equal the cost of lost federal benefits and services.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a Sunday estimate that the bill will increase the federal debt by more than $3.2 trillion over 10 years.
If the bill advances through the Senate, it will be subject to a vote in the House, where lawmakers passed a different version earlier this year.
That vote could come before the Fourth of July holiday.
