Swing-Vote Murkowski Casts “Agonizing” But Decisive Yes On GOP Bill, Gets Slammed From All Sides

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski cast the deciding vote for Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act after seeking concessions for her state.

The sweeping legislative bill is a broad overhaul of tax, healthcare, and immigration policy. It will extend Trump-era tax cuts and tighten Medicaid eligibility.

It passed after a marathon 26-hour vote in the Senate, with Vice President JD Vance breaking a tie.

But Murkowski held the pivotal swing vote. Without her support, the bill would have stalled at 50 votes.

She later described the process as “agonizing” and urged the House to send the bill back to the Senate because she believed it was not ready.

Murkowski, a Republican senator who has lambasted Trump and expressed concerns about the bill, was criticized for giving it her support.

She ultimately voted yes after securing a series of changes to protect her constituents from the bill’s harshest outcomes.

“Did I get everything I wanted? Absolutely not,” Murkowski told reporters after the vote, Politico reports.

The changes she managed to secure specifically relate to the food aid program STAMP, Medicaid, rural healthcare funding, and a tax break for whaling captains.

Under the bill, states with a high error rate of over 6% in paying SNAP benefits would need to pick up between 5% and 15% of the tab.

However, Murkowski secured a concession that means states with the highest error rates will have another two years to implement the policy, which will benefit Alaska and nine others.

She also won a carve-out in the bill’s Medicaid overhaul, delaying the implementation of new work requirements for low-income Alaskans living in rural areas.

That provision is expected to spare thousands of residents who lack access to regular employment opportunities or high-speed internet from losing health coverage.

A fund for rural hospitals, doubled to $50 billion, will also be handed out over five years, and there will be flexibility on where that money is sent, meaning “hundreds of millions of dollars” for Alaska hospitals, community health centers, and other providers, Murkowski said.

Speaking after the vote, she said it was “agonizing” to reach a ‘yes,’ The New York Times reported.

“I struggled mightily with the impact on the most vulnerable in this country when you look at the Medicaid and the SNAP provisions,” she said.

“We do not have a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination,” Murkowski added. “My hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet.”

In a post on X, Murkowski said it was one of the hardest votes she had taken during her lifetime, and again reiterated her hope that it was not the final product.

“But 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,” she said.

“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.”

Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego was among those who criticized Murkowski for the concessions she secured.

“The Klondike Kickback that @lisamurkowski secured encourages waste, fraud, and abuse in The food stamp program,” he wrote on X.

“Alaska gets preferential treatment if they continue to be wasteful with administering its food stamp program.”

He had earlier posted: “Still on the Senate floor. Republicans are working with Sen. Murkowski to create whatever Kodiak Kickback she needs to vote for this dangerous bill and kick millions of people of [sic] Medicaid.”

Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar also criticized the SNAP benefit concession.

“By voting to financially reward states with the HIGHEST error rates, Republicans turned incentives for fraud upside down,” she said in a social media post.

“States like Alaska & 9 others that make the most mistakes in SNAP benefits go scot-free from SNAP cost shifts for two years while the rest pay.”

Republican Senator Paul Rand, who refused to support the bill because of the debt ceiling, was among those who claimed Murkowski sold out Americans to protect her state.

He said Murkowski supported the bill because it was a “bailout for Alaska at the expense of the rest of the country,” according to NBC News reporter Ryan Nobles.

Promoting her new memoir Far From Home in an interview last week, Murkowski said she often felt “lonely” in the Senate for speaking out and criticizing Trump.

She also spoke of how she had “considered” switching to the Democratic Party, but did not foresee them being any better than the Republicans,” The Hill reported.

Murkowski made headlines in April when she admitted that many Republicans fear retaliation from Trump for speaking out.

“We are all afraid,” Murkowski said at The Foraker Group’s leadership summit in Anchorage.

“It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before,” she added.

“And I’ll tell you, I am oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”