The Ethos of the Tundra

 

Does the Libertarian mindset always say, "I got mine. You want yours? Go fuck yourself." That's what I think when I read about Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski's changing her vote for Jethro's One Big Beautiful Bill because she got bought off. David Dayen, reporting for Prospect.org:

Overnight, the Senate radically altered its Big Beautiful Bill, zeroing in on one state and one Senator in an attempt to buy her vote....

...the gifts to Alaska, designed to sway Murkowski, came fast and furious. The federal share of payment for Medicaid would be increased for “the state with the highest separate poverty guideline.” That happens to be Alaska. Their share would increase 25 percent above that of a typical state.

Other programs bundle together benefits for “noncontiguous states,” referring to Alaska and Hawaii. That includes an exemption from work requirements for SNAP, an increase in Medicare reimbursement rates to select health care providers, and a waiver from the cost-sharing provisions, whereby a state must contribute to SNAP funding. As long as the noncontiguous state is “actively implementing a corrective action plan” to reduce error rates in the program (meaning people given benefits who do not qualify), that cost share can be eliminated. Alaska has the highest error rates in the nation, but under this provision, by simply saying they’re trying to fix it, they can avoid the cost share.