Cue the Moby Dick jokes....

Senator Lisa Murkowski was convinced at the last minute to become the deciding vote for the Republican budget by the inclusion of a big tax break for (are you sitting down?) whaling captains. No, really -- whaling captains. As I said, the jokes really just write themselves on this one. Democrats instantly came up with two catchy names for all the Alaska-specific pork Murkowski extracted from her fellow Republicans: the Kodiak Kickback, or the Polar Payoff.

Immediately after her vote, Murkowski cried some crocodile tears both for herself and for the Americans who don't happen to live in Alaska, while desperately trying to justify her vote to reporters. She bemoaned how hard the past few days have been for her, and what an "agonizing" ordeal it was for her to get to the point where she could vote to kick 12 million people off of Medicaid.

She then pulled a card out that was just laughable -- Murkowski said that she has every hope that the House will now fix all the problems with the bill (the bill that she just voted to pass, without those fixes). This is the same trick Speaker Mike Johnson used on his caucus to convince them to pass the bill in the first place -- don't worry about all the bad stuff in it, the Senate will surely fix it all! It was not believable then, and it is equally ridiculous now, but Murkowski firmly believes that the House will somehow make everything better. The stench of hypocrisy is impossible for Murkowski to avoid, at this point. She even admitted as much, in one of her statements to the press (which is worth watching on video just to see her frosty reaction to the question):

"Do I like this bill? No," Ms. [Lisa] 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."

Translation: "If you don't live in Alaska, well... screw you, Jack."

The Kodiak Kickback contains many goodies for Murkowski's state, one of which is mind-boggling in its stupidity. To be fair, the other provision that will allow a boost (from $10,000 to $50,000) of a tax writeoff for "whaling captains" can also be described as helping "Native Alaskan subsistence whaling." But we still expect a few Moby Dick jokes to be made anyway. With all the other things included in the Kodiak Kickback, the obvious glaring question is if the people of Alaska deserve such special treatment, why wouldn't the bill extend that treatment to everyone in America?

But as for that stupidity... Murkowski got Alaskans exempted from the work requirements for Medicaid and changed a provision dealing with SNAP (or "food stamps"). Regardless of what she says, she simply does not care about the Americans in all the other states that will still have this added burden. But it's the way it was written into the law that produced the stupidity. To avoid these kickbacks getting stripped out by the Senate parliamentarian they had to creatively avoid using language that plainly stated: "This only applies to Alaska," so instead they came up with what they thought was a creative way to identify the state:

Other cuts targeted the way states tax health providers to help pay their portion of Medicaid costs, and for the first time the bill would require states to pay a portion of SNAP benefits based on their rates of erroneous payments.

"We have unique conditions in Alaska that make work requirements really hard. We have a higher error rate when it comes to SNAP benefits that was going to penalize us, and again, not able to meet the requirements meant people would be impacted. That weighs very, very heavily," Murkowski said, adding that in Alaska's isolated economy it's not as easy for people to get jobs.

Originally, Republicans wanted states with SNAP error rates above 6% to shoulder 5% of the cost of benefits, with greater cost-sharing for states making more errors. (Most erroneous SNAP payments are overpayments, or households receiving too large a monthly benefit.)

The national SNAP error rate in 2024 was about 10%, and Alaska’s rate was more than 24%. The final Senate bill text includes a bizarre provision delaying the cost-sharing burden for states with the highest error rates, essentially creating an incentive for states to overpay their SNAP recipients.

Got all of that? Agree with the basic idea or not, but at least it made some sort of sense: states with high error rates were penalized (in an expensive way), therefore it incentivized cleaning up your system and getting your state's error rate down. But now, the addition for Alaska introduces a perverse incentive to do exactly the opposite, because if your state's error rate is through the roof then you don't have to pay extra. Which Democrats were more than happy to point out:

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."

Murkowski doesn't care about this perverse reverse incentive, as long as Alaska is protected. Because, according to her, it'll all be fixed by the House. Which was the biggest hypocrisy of all, as Democrats are already pointing out:

"I struggled mightily with the impact on the most vulnerable in this country when you look to the Medicaid and the SNAP provisions," [Lisa Murkowski] 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."

. . .

"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?"

Perhaps the most stunning thing about the Senate vote wasn't the fact that it took the vice president to cast a tie-breaking vote (making it 51-50) but who voted against it in the end. Rand Paul and Thom Tillis had indicated that they would be voting "No" all along, but in the end Susan Collins also voted against the bill. This was stunning for the simple fact that Collins is usually the one who makes a whole bunch of noise about how "concerned" she is about some vote she's facing, only to back down and vote with Donald Trump in the end. This time around, she actually held her ground. Maybe it's the fact that she will be up for re-election next year, while Murkowski won't be facing her state's voters until 2028? Whatever the reason, it was an unexpected development, since (as mentioned) Collins almost always caves in the end.

In any case, the bill now goes back to the House, which will be in session tomorrow in an attempt to meet Trump's timeline and put it on his desk for the 4th of July. Doing so would require a quick vote where virtually all Republicans have to stick together. Whether that is possible or not will be tomorrow's drama. Call it Act III of this political theater. The question is whether there will be an Act IV or even Act V, or whether House Republicans will also hold their collective noses and vote for a bill that is not "a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination."

Stay tuned....

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant