Republican senator admits she feels 'cheated' by Trump administration after megabill passed
Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said Friday that she felt "cheated" after a concession she won in President Donald Trump 's July 4 spending bill to protect green energy projects was immediately stripped away by her fellow party members.
Despite the megabill's funding cuts for solar and wind projects, Murkowski had successfully negotiated protections for a 12-month window for such projects in Alaska to continue receiving tax credits. Trump and his administration issued recent orders designed to suppress solar and wind projects, however, effectively taking back the exception they had issued Murkowski, she said.
' I feel cheated,' she said Friday. 'I feel like we made a deal and then hours later, a deal was made to somebody else.'
READ MORE: Trump's 'big beautiful' bill will be seen as 'mass extinction event' as voters reel from brutal cuts
The executive order, issued by Trump just days after the concession passed, could lead to a rewrite of federal regulations that would limit the tax credit award for some solar and wind projects, according to Anchorage Daily News. It also will remove what it calls "preferential treatment" from wind and solar over other projects such as oil, natural gas and hydropower.
Murkowski said Friday that the order 'just pulls the rug out from from underneath the deal' she'd made for the 12-month window for tax credits, a way to protect green energy projects needed to combat the incoming energy crisis in Alaska. "I read it as just a total affront to what we had negotiated."
'If you were looking for something proof-positive that the administration is looking to literally cut off a sector of the energy industry, it couldn't be more compelling than first the EO and now the (Interior directive),' she said.
Though she has strongly advocated for the development of oil and gas projects in her state, Murkowski said that a broad approach to energy investment, including in solar and wind, is in the best interest of Alaskans. She said that she believes a mix of energy sources may help to resolve a looming shortage of natural gas along the Railbelt grid, an area that encompasses Anchorage and Fairbanks.
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The Trump administration, however, appears to be focused on halting clean energy development, she said.
'Do I feel like the administration was not being up-front with us? Yes,' she said. 'I said, 'Well, I got a hard-won fight on this is clean energy provision. It's not everything that I wanted, but it's going to keep some of our projects alive, and that's important.'
'So now you have an executive order that goes against what the president himself signed into law, in my view,' she said.
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