Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, on Tuesday cast the deciding vote for President Trump’s sprawling bill to slash taxes and social safety net programs, embracing a measure she acknowledged would harm Americans after securing carve outs to protect her constituents from its harshest impacts.
“Do I like this bill? No,” Ms. Murkowski, who appeared to be quietly seething as she was questioned about her vote, told NBC News. “But 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.”
For weeks, Ms. Murkowski, the moderate fourth-term senator who has criticized Mr. Trump and has long been a swing vote in her party, had expressed concerns about the cuts to Medicaid and SNAP food assistance contained in the bill. It would impose strict new work requirements for both programs and reduce the federal contribution to their costs.
But with Mr. Trump demanding quick action and Republicans facing a tight vote margin in the Senate, Ms. Murkowski wielded unique leverage with party leaders to insist on changes. Republicans stuffed the bill with all sorts of goodies designed to win her over, including a provision that would allow certain Alaskan whaling captains to deduct more of their expenses.
Some viewed the backroom dealing as the work of a savvy and experienced lawmaker fighting for her constituents. But critics castigated Ms. Murkowski, saying she had besmirched herself by taking a bribe from Republican leaders to secure her vote for a bill that she, herself, said was dangerous for the vast majority of the country.
“Republicans are working Sen. Murkowski to create whatever Kodiak Kickback she needs to vote for this dangerous bill and kick millions of people of Medicaid,” Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, wrote on social media.
To make things worse, Democrats said, one of the carve outs she won to protect Alaskans would create a perverse incentive to reward bad actors across the country in administering SNAP benefits.
One of Ms. Murkowski’s major concerns was that Alaska’s high error rate in paying SNAP benefits would result in her state having to shoulder an uncommonly high share of the program’s costs. First, Republicans tried to exempt Alaska from the provision by carving out “noncontiguous states.”
But when the Senate parliamentarian, the official who enforces the chamber’s rules, said the bill could not allow such a special exception, party leaders had to find a different way to protect Alaska. They settled on giving a two-year exemption to states with the highest rates of either overpaying or underpaying SNAP benefits, effectively shielding 10 other states that also made frequent mistakes from having to pay higher costs.
“The only way of getting past the rule was to expand the graft,” Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the ranking Democrat on the Agriculture Committee that oversees the program, said.
“A state that’s doing a good job — they’re going to have to get these cuts,” she said. The message of the Republican-written bill, she argued, was: “Raise your error rates — get them up to 10, 20, 30, 40 percent! Make a whole bunch of mistakes when it comes to SNAP, because then you’ll get more money.”
For days, Ms. Murkowski had mulled what to do. She spent much of an overnight session ahead of its passage huddled with various colleagues on and off the Senate floor — sometimes with a thick blanket slung across her shoulders against the frigid temperatures in the chamber — trying to decide where she would come down on the bill. After the vote, Ms. Murkowski continued to express grave concerns about the legislation she had supported.
“Agonizing,” she said when asked to describe the process of getting to “yes” on the bill. She said that ultimately she supported an extension of the 2017 tax cuts, which expire at the end of the year, and killing the bill would also have had a harmful impact on the people in her state.
“I struggled mightily with the impact on the most vulnerable in this country when you look to the Medicaid and the SNAP provisions,” she said.
“We do not have a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination,” she added. “My hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet.”
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said Republicans had backed a bill that they knew was problematic because they were afraid of Mr. Trump.
And he singled out Ms. Murkowski for derision without naming her, quoting a comment she made in April at a conference in Anchorage, about how G.O.P. lawmakers fear crossing Mr. Trump.
“They voted in obeisance to Donald Trump and his billionaire buddies,” Mr. Schumer said. “Because, as one of the senators said, ‘We are all afraid.’”
Mr. Schumer also credited Democrats with removing one of the sweeteners on Medicaid that Senate Republicans had added to the bill to win over Ms. Murkowski. He called the provision a “polar payoff,” adding, “it should not have stood — and it didn’t.”
As the bill made its way back to the House on Tuesday to face an uncertain fate, Democrats were using Ms. Murkowski’s words to make their case against it.
“Listen to this quote from Murkowski, who just caved and voted for this,” Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, said as the Rules Committee debated the legislation.
He then quoted her urging the House to improve the bill, adding: “If you really believe that, why the hell did you vote for the bill?”
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times. She writes features and profiles, with a recent focus on House Republican leadership.
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