U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) walks after the Senate passes U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping spending and tax bill, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 1, 2025.
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska cast a critical vote Tuesday for President Donald Trump’s massive tax-and-spending bill, helping to push the controversial legislation through the GOP-controlled Senate.
But not before she secured a key carveout for her constituents from one of the bill’s strictest new provisions.
“Do I like this bill? No. But I tried to take care of Alaska’s interests,” she told NBC News’ Ryan Nobles Tuesday.
“I advocated for my state’s interests, I will continue to do that and I will make no excuses for doing that,” Murkowski said after she cast the final ‘yea’ that Republicans needed to reach 50 votes and trigger a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance.
“I know that in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill,” she told Nobles. “I don’t like that.”
But she voted for it anyway, she said, because her state would benefit overall.
Murkowski, a moderate Republican who has criticized Trump, has raised concerns about the bill’s provisions making cuts to SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — also known as food stamps.
One-tenth of Alaskans received help from SNAP in 2024, according to data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Alaska also has by far the nation’s highest SNAP payment error rate, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But she ultimately backed the bill after securing last-minute benefits, including a boost in funding for rural hospitals and a carveout on SNAP cuts for her state.
The final Senate bill exempts states with the highest SNAP error rates from the cuts for two years.
In a lengthy statement later Tuesday, Murkowski touted her efforts to improve the bill for her state.
“My goal throughout the reconciliation process has been to make a bad bill better for Alaska, and in many ways, we have done that,” Murkowski wrote on social media.
“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,” she wrote.
The bill passed the Senate 51-50 after Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaker vote. Three Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Kentucky’s Rand Paul — sided with all of the chamber’s Democrats.
The legislation now returns to the House for a final vote. If it passes, it will head to Trump’s desk to be signed into law.
Paul had characterized the GOP leadership’s final deliberations over the bill as a choice between “dealing with me and reducing the debt ceiling or giving pork and subsidies to Alaska.”
“They chose to add more pork and subsidies for Alaska to secure that,” Paul said, Nobles reported.
Murkowski took offense at Paul’s critique, which was summarized to her as him calling her vote “a bailout for Alaska at the expense of the rest of the country.”
“Oh my,” Murkowski said. She then stared at Nobles for about 15 seconds without speaking.
“My response is, I have an obligation to the people of the state of Alaska, and I live up to that every single day. I fight for my state’s interests, and I make sure that Alaskans are understood. I work hard to take care of a state that has more unique situations, more unique people, and it’s just different,” she said.
“And so when, when people suggest that federal dollars go to one of our 50 states in a quote, bailout, I find that offensive,” she said.
Murkowski told reporters after the vote that her decision was “agonizing.”
She also said she hopes that the House will continue to make changes to the bill, rather than try to ram it through in order to send it to Trump by his aspirational deadline of Friday, which is Independence Day.
“We do not have a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination. My hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet,” she said.
Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the ranking member of the House Rules Committee, tore into Murkowski over that remark later Tuesday.
“My question to her is, If you really believe that, why the hell did you vote for this bill?” McGovern said.
Rep. Daniel Goldman, D-N.Y., wrote on X, “Murkowski votes yes and hopes it doesn’t pass … It’s pretty simple: words don’t matter. Votes do.”
