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lisa murkowksi
GOP Still Lacks Votes to Pass Budget Bill 'Because It's a Moral Monstrosity,' Says Senate Democrat
"We have been debating amendments for 21 hours and we are still going because through 12 hours of debate and 21 hours of amendment votes, Republicans still don't have 50 votes for their bill," said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Jul 01, 2025
Even after an all-night session of amendment votes and wrangling behind closed doors, Senate Republicans still did not have enough support to pass their reconciliation package as of Tuesday morning, leaving party leaders scrambling to placate GOP holdovers who are purportedly nervous about the legislation's unprecedented cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) argued in a social media post that the reason for the GOP's inability to quickly rally its own members around the legislation is straightforward: "Because it's a moral monstrosity."
"We have been debating amendments for 21 hours and we are still going because through 12 hours of debate and 21 hours of amendment votes, Republicans still don't have 50 votes for their bill," Murphy wrote at roughly 5:30 am ET, as the marathon "vote-a-rama" continued with no end in sight.
With Democrats unanimously opposed to the bill, Senate Republicans can only afford to lose three GOP votes if they are to send the measure back to the House for final approval. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have said they will vote against the bill in its current form, and Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) are undecided. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) also suggested he's on the fence.
Republican leaders have been working to bring Murkowski into the yes column with a proposal that would temporarily exempt Alaska and other states from the bill's massive cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, ripped the proposal as "absurd" and said it would reward the states with the highest SNAP error rates.
"Insanity reigns," Klobuchar wrote on social media.
Senate Republicans' margins became more difficult after Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) announced his opposition to the legislation over the weekend, pointing to the Senate version's devastating cuts to Medicaid.
"What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding's not there anymore?" Tillis asked in a floor speech on Sunday, citing an estimate of the number of people in North Carolina who could lose health insurance under the Republican bill.
Throughout the country, nearly 12 million people would lose coverage under the Senate reconciliation bill, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
"Kicking millions off healthcare, blowing up the national debt by trillions, and devastating generational economic harms—all being written into law on the fly," Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said early Tuesday morning after hours of debate and amendment votes.
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Wildlife Defenders Slam Senate Dems' Bill for Not Protecting Refuge in Alaska
"We will never stop fighting to protect these sacred lands, the Porcupine caribou, and our communities," vowed the Gwich'in Steering Committee's executive director.
Aug 08, 2022
Amid widespread applause Sunday for U.S. Senate Democrats' long-awaited passage of a budget reconciliation package, Indigenous and conservationist leaders declared that they were "deeply disappointed" in lawmakers' refusal to restore protections to a key region of Alaska.
"Congress has chosen to ignore the health of the Arctic and the Gwich'in way of life."
Unlike the Build Back Better Act approved by House Democrats last year, the deal negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) doesn't shield the incredibly biodiverse Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) from fossil fuel activity--which the Wilderness Society called "a grievous attack on the rights, culture, and sacred lands of the Gwich'in and Inupiat peoples."
After the Inflation Reduction Act passed the Senate on Sunday, Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich'in Steering Committee--an Indigenous group that has long fought to safeguard ANWR's Coastal Plain--blasted the exclusion.
"In the Arctic, we're experiencing a warming climate at four times the rate as the rest of the world, yet Congress has chosen to ignore the health of the Arctic and the Gwich'in way of life by failing to stop this destructive and failed oil and gas program," she said. "We will never stop fighting to protect these sacred lands, the Porcupine caribou, and our communities."
\u201cThe Arctic Refuge is an essential nursery for the world\u2019s birds\u2014but it was put in jeopardy due to potential oil and gas development. But there's hope\u2014we have a chance to permanently #ProtectTheArctic. Take action today: https://t.co/lw4T4M5UFs\u201d— Audubon Society (@Audubon Society) 1659845521
After Manchin joined with Senate Republicans in 2017 to thwart efforts by other Democrats and conservationists to protect ANWR, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) proposed forcing the U.S. Interior Department to hold two lease sales for ANWR--legislation that was included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
When signing what critics called the GOP tax scam into law in December 2017, then-President Donald Trump said that "corporations are literally going wild over this." Murkowski, meanwhile, framed the passage of her ANWR measure as "a watershed moment for Alaska and all of America" that would "give us renewed hope for growth and prosperity."
While the first of the two required lease sales was held just before Trump left office in 2021, the event failed to attract fossil fuel giants.
In fact, as the Gwich'in Steering Committee pointed out Sunday, as global banks and insurance companies have pledged to not be involved with exploiting ANWR, the three companies with leases--Regenerate Alaska, the only oil firm that bid in the 2021 sale, along with Chevron and Hilcorp, which both held decades-old leases--have backed out.
Peter Winsor, executive director of Alaska Wilderness League, said in June that Regenerate Alaska, a subsidiary of Australia-based 88 Energy, "canceling its lease interest on the heels of Chevron and Hilcorp divesting themselves of their own Arctic refuge holdings is the clearest sign yet that there is zero interest out there in industrializing the wildest place left in America."
"We have long known that the American people don't want drilling in the Arctic refuge, the Gwich'in people don't want it, and we now have further proof that the oil industry doesn't want it either," he added.
\u201cThe Arctic Refuge comprises 19.3 million acres of land that has been stewarded and held sacred by Gwich'in & I\u00f1upiat people for millennia.\n\nCongress must #ProtectTheArctic and repeal the drilling mandate in the #InflationReductionAct. #StandWithTheGwichin\n\nhttps://t.co/EU2PvdNs32\u201d— Northern Center (NAEC) (@Northern Center (NAEC)) 1659383533
Following the Senate's vote Sunday, Winsor joined Demientieff, the Gwich'in leader, in expressing disappointment about the package's exclusion of ANWR safeguards while also highlighting handouts to fossil fuel giants included in the legislation.
"The United States just took a big leap forward to address climate change," he said. "However, today's progress left out public lands as part of the solution, and in fact parts of the bill increased oil and gas extraction on our nation's lands and waters, including in Alaska's Cook Inlet."
"We are... doubling down on our efforts to make certain that public lands are the focus of future climate progress."
The Biden administration in May canceled three fossil fuel lease sales for the Gulf of Mexico and Cook Inlet, citing a lack of industry interest--a move welcomed by climate campaigners, who continue to call on President Joe Biden to end all offshore drilling.
Discussing Manchin and Schumer's compromise, Nicole Whittington-Evans, state director at Defenders of Wildlife, told the Anchorage Daily News in late July that "I think the Alaska provisions will really greatly reduce our achievements, in terms of climate, with this deal."
The federal government would have to make at least 60 million acres of waters available for fossil fuel leases to hold a sale for offshore wind energy projects, which Whittington-Evans said "is very significant" and "does not seem like a great trade-off for Alaska."
Winsor on Sunday pledged to keep fighting for regional protections, saying that "while we too celebrate a win today for our climate as a whole, we are also doubling down on our efforts to make certain that public lands are the focus of future climate progress."
"Tomorrow we'll be back at work," he said, "seeking to restore congressional protections for the Arctic refuge, and urging President Biden to do everything in his power to make sure the Arctic refuge is a climate solution, and not an oilfield."
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Collins-Murkowski Abortion Bill Denounced as 'Just Another Political Stunt'
"Unless these senators are willing to end the filibuster to pass this measure, there's no reason to take it seriously," said the head of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Aug 01, 2022
As GOP-led states continue working to further restrict reproductive freedom in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's late June ruling, some progressive advocates on Monday responded critically to the introduction of bipartisan abortion rights legislation.
Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) introduced the Reproductive Freedom for All Act, which they claim "would undo the damage of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade."
NARAL Pro-Choice America president Mini Timmaraju declared that "this bill is just another political stunt that would not actually address the abortion rights and access crisis that has pushed care out of reach for millions of people already."
"Unless these senators are willing to end the filibuster to pass this measure, there's no reason to take it seriously," Timmaraju added.
\u201cOk, fine. We\u2019ll say it.\n\nThis bill is not it. When millions of people are living without the right to an abortion, a bill that doesn\u2019t even prohibit pre-viability abortion bans is a performance at best. We are in crisis and we need Congress to act like it.\u201d— Physicians for Reproductive Health (@Physicians for Reproductive Health) 1659384711
A coalition of 15 groups including the ACLU, NARAL, Physicians for Reproductive Health (PRH), and Planned Parenthood Federation of America said in a lengthy joint statement Monday that "the crisis today demands legislative solutions that make abortion truly accessible."
"We are looking to the future and the bills that get us there--bills that protect our liberty, and strike down the political interference that denies us access to abortion and treats us as less than," the coalition continued. "Regrettably, the bill introduced does not address the abortion access crisis."
"This bill claims to 'codify' Roe v. Wade but fails to do so. In fact, it does not expressly prohibit pre-viability abortion bans, leaving states able to continue to pass abortion bans that are denying people access to essential healthcare across the country," the groups added. "This bill has been written for a world that does not exist and would provide little solace in the nightmare we are living."
According to the co-sponsors, the Reproductive Freedom for All Act would:
- Prohibit state regulations that impose an undue burden on a woman's access to pre-viability abortions, while allowing states to enact reasonable restrictions on post-viability abortions--provided that states cannot ban abortions that are necessary to protect the life or health of the mother;
- Protect access to contraceptives; and
- Preserve conscience protections.
NARAL noted that in February, then again in May--after a draft of the Dobbs decision leaked--both Collins and Murkowski refused to support the Women's Health Protection Act (WHPA), a Democrat-led bill to codify Roe, the 1973 decision that affirmed the constitutional right to abortion until it was recently overturned by the high court's far-right majority.
At least 10 Republican senators would have to join with the Democratic caucus to pass a bill, due to the filibuster rule that is backed by not only the GOP, but also Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who notably opposed WHPA.
\u201cThis bill is a political stunt that won\u2019t address the abortion rights & access crisis that is causing harm in the lives of real people across the country right now. Here\u2019s what the Senate can do: end the filibuster\u2014 and pass WHPA. https://t.co/INGGWEG17h\u201d— Mini Timmaraju (@Mini Timmaraju) 1659389905
"Senate Republicans have been crystal clear about where they stand on abortion," NARAL said, pointing out that ahead of the Dobbs ruling, "47 GOP senators signed onto amicus briefs calling on the court to end" Roe.
Collins and Murkowski also helped shift the U.S. Supreme Court to the right during former President Donald Trump's tenure. Though Murkowski voted present rather than to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Collins voted against confirming Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Murkowski backed Barrett, Collins supported Kavanaugh, and they both voted for Justice Neil Gorsuch.
As The Washington Post reported Monday:
It's not clear that Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) would bring up the bill for a vote ahead of the midterm elections in November. There has been disagreement in the Democratic caucus on whether a bipartisan bill that has no chance of passage should be brought forward, which would make it more difficult for Democratic candidates to contrast themselves with Republicans. And many Democrats, Kaine said, would prefer the Democratic version of the bill, the Women's Health Protection Act, which includes fewer limitations on abortion.
Kaine calls the bill the bare minimum.
"What the four of us were trying to do was put a statutory minimum in place that replicated what the law was a day before Dobbs," he said.
The newspaper noted that Kaine also admitted their proposal does not have the support of 10 Republican senators.
Last week, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) blocked the Right to Contraception Act. Because Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) tried to pass the House-approved bill by unanimous consent, other GOP senators were not required to weigh in.
This post has been updated with the coalition statement.
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