Inside Lisa Murkowski’s ‘Agonizing’ Reconciliation Vote: How Trump’s Biggest GOP Critic Saved His Agenda

Sen. Lisa Murkowski cast the deciding vote to pass Trump’s reconciliation bill in the Senate. But it came at a price — for the federal government and for her.

Lisa Murkowski
Sen. Lisa Murkowski talks to reporters at the Capitol in Washington. J. Scott Applewhite/AP

In the struggle to pass President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, it was his biggest Republican critic in the Senate who came to the rescue: Lisa Murkowski.

Throughout the GOP’s painful scramble to come up with 50 Republican votes for the reconciliation bill, Senate leaders targeted Murkowski — one of four key holdouts.

The moderate Republican — famous for bucking her party during Trump’s 2017 health care bill negotiations, during Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 Supreme Court confirmation and during the 2021 Senate vote on Trump’s impeachment — had vocally shared her concerns about Medicaid cuts and reductions to food assistance programs in the reconciliation bill. But GOP leaders apparently saw Murkowski as the most gettable senator. So they tried to appeal to the senior senator’s central political philosophy: Alaskans above all else.