Latest news with #LisaMurkowski
New York Times
3 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Lisa Murkowski Isn't Using ‘Nice Words' About Life Under Trump
Senator Lisa Murkowski was listing all the ways that President Trump's efforts to slash the federal government had harmed Alaska, from the funding freezes on programs the state depends on to the layoffs of federal workers who live there, when she delivered something of an understatement. 'It's a challenging time right now,' she recently told a crowd at a state infrastructure conference here in the state's largest city. 'I could use nice words about it — but I don't.' At a time when the Republican Congress has grown increasingly deferential to Mr. Trump, Ms. Murkowski has veered in the opposite direction from her party, using sharp words and her vote on the Senate floor to push back on him and his administration time and again. She opposed the confirmations of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, and Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director. She has voted repeatedly to block Mr. Trump's sweeping tariffs on most U.S. trading partners. She has publicly lamented Republicans' obeisance to Mr. Trump as he tramples on legislative prerogatives, saying that it is 'time for Congress to reassert itself.' She said Mr. Trump's Oval Office dressing-down of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine left her 'sick to my stomach,' and recently called his decision to end deportation protections for Afghan refugees 'a historic betrayal.' And she has been frank about the dilemma faced by Republicans like her who are dismayed about the president's policies and pronouncements but worried that speaking out about them could bring death threats or worse. 'We are all afraid,' she told constituents in April, adding: 'I'm oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that's not right.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Washington Post
4 days ago
- General
- Washington Post
What we can learn from the senator who nearly died for democracy
Zaakir Tameez is the author of 'Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation,' to be released on June 3. On May 13, a man who made death threats against Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada) for her foreign policy views was sentenced to nearly four years in prison. Last month, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she was 'afraid' of using her voice to speak about political controversies. A month before that, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) released audio recordings of death threats he received while he was considering how to vote on Pete Hegseth's nomination as defense secretary.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
This program helps 6 million families pay their energy bills. Here's what's at risk if it's cut.
The Trump administration wants to eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), a little-known piece of the social safety net that helps low-income people pay their utility bills. Congress created the program in 1981, initially to help people pay for heating in the winter. The program — which has had broad bipartisan support — has increasingly been used to pay for cooling as summers grow hotter and more dangerous to human health due to climate change. At a recent budget hearing, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, called the program a 'lifesaver' for residents in Alaska when questioning Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about its future. Kennedy acknowledged the importance of the program but also said Trump's proposal to eliminate the funding was based on the expectation of lower future energy prices. Yet according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential energy prices are expected to go up in much of the country at least through 2026. Murkowski and lawmakers from across the aisle have been pressuring the administration to commit to funding the program, which provided $4.1 billion to states, territories and tribal nations in fiscal 2025. But the administration has not only called to defund the program in its entirety, but also has put the staff that administer the program at Health and Human Services (HHS) on leave. Advocates say the end of the program could be disastrous for households who rely on other government benefits that are also under threat, like the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, which are both facing deep cuts. As the funding of LIHEAP continues to be debated on the national level, here's an explanation of what the program does and who it helps: LIHEAP helps about 6 million households pay their heating- and cooling-related utility bills annually and prevents disconnections through an emergency assistance fund. The payments typically go directly to the utility companies. States tailor the program to best fit the needs of residents. For example, in places like Arizona, where extreme heat kills hundreds of people a year, a higher allocation of funding goes to cooling assistance. In some states, funds can be used to repair furnaces or air conditioning units. States are required to account for both a household's income and its energy burden, or the percentage of a family's income that goes to pay utility bills, to target those most at risk for utility disconnections. Low-income households typically have higher energy burdens, often due to homes with poor insulation or drafty windows and doors. The LIHEAP program targets households with family members who are particularly vulnerable to extreme temperatures. In fiscal 2023, the program reached 2.1 million households where a resident had a disability; nearly 1 million households that had small children; and 2.4 million households that housed an elderly person. Both children and the elderly are more sensitive to extreme temperatures because they are physiologically less able to regulate their body temperature. People with complex medical needs also shoulder higher energy costs, due to electricity-dependent medical equipment. Single parents, who are disproportionately women, are more likely to be energy insecure, as are rural residents, Black, Indigenous and Latinx households. And the people who utilize the program are usually on the brink of an emergency — either already disconnected from their utility or on the verge of it. 'By the time they're reaching out for help, it's that their situation has escalated,' said Diana Hernandez, an associate professor and sociologist at Columbia University who studies energy insecurity. Only about 17 percent of eligible households receive LIHEAP assistance, said Hernandez, who has been pushing to increase funding for the program. 'The money always runs out,' she said. Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, an organization that works with state officials to implement LIHEAP, said electricity costs are going up at a higher rate than inflation and that rising temperatures are also leading to a greater need for cooling. 'In Southwestern states the length of the [heat waves are] getting longer,' Wolfe said. 'The bills are going up, and a lot of housing is just poorly built … so the costs are going up faster than expected,' he said. LIHEAP has multiple benefits that all center on keeping people safe and healthy in their homes, advocates say. While in many states residents have some protection from a utility disconnecting their electricity, without energy assistance programs like LIHEAP more households would likely keep their homes at dangerous temperatures to keep their bills down. In a Census Household Pulse Survey from 2024, nearly 23 percent of households reported keeping their homes at unsafe temperatures over the previous 12 months due to rising energy costs. But doing so is risky in places like Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located. While there is a moratorium on electricity shutoffs during the summer, in 2024, 138 people died indoors of a heat-related cause, with 18 percent of those deaths in a home where the AC was functioning but not turned on. Seventy percent did not have a working AC unit in a place where average summer temperatures are over 100 degrees. These deaths occurred in a state where over 20,000 households received LIHEAP assistance in fiscal 2023, according to the National Energy Utility Affordability Coalition, which tracks state use of funds. Without the program, 'we'll be having more and more of these unnecessary deaths,' Wolfe said. Helping to pay energy bills has also been shown to help keep families more food secure. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 20 percent of U.S. households said they skipped meals and medicines to pay for electricity bills in 2020, a time when households were under additional stress due to the pandemic. And in a 2019 survey of LIHEAP recipients, 36 percent said that before they began to receive energy assistance, they went without food for at least a day to pay utility bills. It's called the 'heat or eat' phenomenon. 'Just because the bill gets paid, people should not assume that that's not at great cost,' said Olivia Wein, senior attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. But with multiple social welfare programs facing deep cuts, 'it's going to be harder and harder for people to do that, to juggle enough to get the bills paid on time,' she said. Wein points out that people's housing security could also be impacted. Maintaining a utility connection is a condition on many housing leases, and without LIHEAP, more people could face evictions, Wein fears. She's also worried children could be taken from their parents. 'Not having heat in the winter could result in Child Protective Services getting involved because your home is not habitable,' she said. 'So there are all of these ripple effects from unaffordable energy that we will unfortunately see on the grand scale without a strong LIHEAP program.' For fiscal 2025, all of the program's funding has already been released, so residents won't see an impact until fiscal 2026, which starts in September. But even if the program is funded, Wein says there will be issues with disbursement because of the federal layoffs. While each state develops individual programs, they still have to run their plans by the federal agency every year to determine state allocations, Wein said. This plan is also accompanied by a complicated formula that happens each time funding is released. Right now only four people are managing the LIHEAP program on the federal level; after the entire office was laid off in April. Wein predicts this will delay funding being sent to the states. HHS did not respond to a request for comment by press time. Additionally, community action agencies, places around the country where people go to apply for benefits like LIHEAP, could be shut down, due to a separate move to defund the Community Services Block Grant. This would make it harder for residents to apply to the program. 'We need that funding as part of our whole ecosystem,' Wein said. Trump also sought to zero out LIHEAP funding in his first term, but Congress ultimately is in charge of approving a budget. But Wein said the precarity of the program feels different this time around. 'Congress is really looking at cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting. … Things that you would never imagine being cut like entitlement programs are in live discussion right now. So that's the unknown.' Advocates say that there really isn't any other comparable safety net for residents seeking energy assistance if LIHEAP ends up being cut. Though alternatives like charitable giving and religious organizations can help pay for energy costs, it doesn't come close to meeting the needs of 6 million people who were previously reached by the program, Wein said. 'There is no easy fix and there is no comprehensive fix to losing LIHEAP,' she said. 'Every state is going to be devastated with the loss of this funding.' The post This program helps 6 million families pay their energy bills. Here's what's at risk if it's cut. appeared first on The 19th. News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday. Subscribe to our free, daily newsletter.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Senate leans toward preserving much of Trump's ‘big, beautiful bill'
Senate Republicans are hotly debating whether to do a full teardown of the House's sweeping tax and spending bill, or gently renovate it. Right now, the renovators are winning out. The upper chamber is likely to make substantive changes to the House-passed tax cuts legislation, according to interviews with a half-dozen GOP senators on Thursday. And they won't be on small matters. But the idea of tearing up the bill and passing something wildly different isn't exactly catching on, even among those who have issues with President Donald Trump's megabill. 'I don't know about blowing things up,' Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, one of the more independent-minded senators, told Semafor. 'You can kind of see the writing on the wall here. You've got Republicans in the House that have been able to move something out. You've got a Republican majority here, and you have a president who very clearly wants this to pass,' Murkowski added. Count her among those who want to change the House bill's Medicaid language, a hot topic among Republicans who are worried about coverage losses and hospitals closing. She also wants to take a look at the House's quick phase out of Biden-era clean energy tax credits. Senate Republicans are also looking at slashing the House's generous state and local tax deduction, or SALT, changing its spectrum auction language and potentially beefing up the child tax credit. But House and Senate leaders have been coordinating for weeks, and Republicans believe there's a decent chance that the Senate passes something that closely resembles what the House passed on Thursday morning. 'There's been a lot of coordination,' said Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., after the GOP's first party meeting since House passage. 'There's going to be some changes, but they've laid down a good bill, and, you know, we make sure it fits our rules and I believe we're going to make some changes and pass it.' The Senate has a goal of passing its bill by July 4, which would give them four weeks after next week's recess. That would require not just negotiating a bill that gets 50 votes but also navigating the unlimited Senate vote-a-rama and making sure the parliamentarian signs off on the bill's filibuster protections. It's a tall order, but after seeing Speaker Mike Johnson and Trump jam through a bill after a week of bellyaching from holdouts, it no longer seems crazy. 'There will be a Senate viewpoint and changes. There will be a lot of similarities, but there'll be differences,' said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, 'It's too early to tell how big and broad the differences are going to be.' Some Republicans want huge structural changes to the bill. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., wants to strip the debt ceiling out and others want far larger spending cuts. 'I'm not going to vote for it with minor tweaks. I think everybody's kind of happy talking and 'get together and pull together and gotta do this' and that crap. That's the way they're going to try to make it go,' said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. Whether he can make bigger changes, he said, 'depends whether we've got four people saying: 'No, we're mortgaging our kids' future, it's immoral and it's gotta stop.'' Johnson mentioned Paul along with Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, as aligned on the issue. Republicans can afford to lose only three votes on the Senate floor and still pass the bill. But after Trump overcame similar obstacles in the House, it's now the Senate's turn to contend with the White House's pressure campaign. And Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said that the chamber should try to pass a version of the bill that the House can accept, rather than ping-ponging the legislation back and forth. That all depends on what sort of changes the House can stomach. Hawley calls a co-payment requirement on some Medicaid beneficiaries a 'sick tax' and wants to take a look at the 'provider tax' that could threaten hospitals, Capito said clean energy tax credits 'have created jobs, really good jobs, and good companies. So we want to make sure we do it right.' And Hoeven said some of the House bill's agriculture policy is at risk because Senate rules on so-called budget reconciliation bills could knock it out. 'Spectrum is going to be corrected,' said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., who wants to enshrine protections to certain bands from spectrum auctions. 'Everybody's acknowledging it has to be changed. I think the House was expecting us to do the fix.' House leaders have been trying to convince the Senate not to change the bill too much. But, Capito said, 'I think they expect' some changes. After all, the Senate's been telegraphing them for a while. Thursday's vote was a big political win for Trump and Speaker Johnson, CNN reports Bookmark material: NPR rounds up what's actually in the bill.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Crippling Clean-Energy Tax Credits Won't Fly, GOP Senators Say
(Bloomberg) -- The House's draconian cuts to former President Joe Biden's landmark climate law won't fly in the Senate, key Republican senators said Thursday. Can Frank Gehry's 'Grand LA' Make Downtown Feel Like a Neighborhood? NY Private School Pleads for Donors to Stay Open After Declaring Bankruptcy Chicago's O'Hare Airport Seeks Up to $4.3 Billion of Muni Debt NYC's War on Trash Gets a Glam Squad NJ Transit Makes Deal With Engineers, Ending Three-Day Strike Just hours after the House narrowly passed a massive tax and spending bill gutting key clean-energy tax incentives, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the Senate was planning its own effort. 'They give us a good product to work with but we have senators who want to write our own bill,' Thune said. Other Republican senators said they were already planning to make changes. Softening aggressive phaseouts of key tax credits for clean electricity production and nuclear power projects are among the top priorities, said Senator Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican from Alaska who has bucked her party on key votes before. 'I'm concerned about the direction the House takes,' Murkowski said. 'Obviously we have our work cut out for us.' Senator John Hoeven, a North Dakota Republican, said he expected the Senate to make changes to limits the House put on the ability of project sponsors to sell tax credits to third parties. Still, tough talk by Senate Republicans might not translate into action. Republicans who opt to vote against President Donald Trump's top legislative priority risk the wrath of the president and as well as potential primary challenges, said Chris Moyer, a former Democratic Senate staffer. 'At the end of the day they are going to vote for a bill extending tax cuts for millions of Americans,' Moyer said. While some moderate Republicans in the Senate have vowed to defend the energy credits, the tight margin in the House — where Speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose three votes — may limit their ability to act as a firewall, said James Lucier, managing director at research group Capital Alpha Partners. 'The Senate will have a mind of its own,' Senator John Curtis, a Utah Republican who previously chaired the Conservative Climate Caucus when he served in the House of Representatives. But he added: 'I think we're also very well aware that it's a tenuous situation in the House and that will be respected.' Still, renewable energy stocks are tumbling, even as some Wall Street analysts suggested a final bill isn't likely to be as damaging to the industry. Shares of Sunrun Inc., America's biggest rooftop-solar company, plunged 37% Thursday — the most ever. Equipment provider SolarEdge Technologies Inc. slid 25%. NextEra Energy Inc., the biggest US developer of wind and solar projects, dropped 6.4%. Analysts at Roth Capital Partners said in a note the bill's 'biggest surprise' for the clean-energy sectors would be denying residential solar-leasing companies the federal investment tax credit. This would hurt several home-energy companies that offer lease options for rooftop-panel systems. 'The impact to Americans is that this will make energy bills more expensive,' Sunrun Chief Executive Officer Mary Powell said in an interview. 'It will slash consumers' access to affordable, reliable solutions.' While the House GOP bill would take a sledgehammer to Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, it's 'not yet a finishing blow,' analysts at Jefferies wrote in a note. 'We don't expect this to last into Senate draft.' If passed without revision, the House bill would be the biggest blow to clean power yet from Donald Trump's administration. The president has been keen to undo Biden's climate legacy and has already throttled the country's fledgling offshore wind sector. The House bill represents a 'nightmare scenario for US clean energy advocates and defenders of the Biden-era IRA,' BloombergNEF analysts Ethan Zindler and Derrick Flakoll wrote in a note. The provisions that bar US projects from using components, subcomponents or even materials from China would make it nearly impossible for US solar and battery manufacturers to qualify for the tax incentives, they wrote. The House GOP bill would end technology-neutral clean electricity tax credits for sources including wind and solar starting in 2029 and require those projects to begin construction within 60 days of the legislation becoming law. The initial version proposed by House Republicans had a longer phase-out time, allowing many of the credits to exist until 2032. Without the tax credits, returns for renewable power plants could drop below threshold necessary to stimulate investment and likely spur a strategic capital shift away from the US, Bloomberg Intelligence wrote in a note. 'Without tax credits it's harder to invest,' Bobby Chada, an investment analyst at Capital Group, said in an interview on the sidelines of the Aurora Energy Research conference in London. --With assistance from William Mathis, Alastair Marsh, Janet Freund and Erik Wasson. (Updates shares in the 13th paragraph and adds comment from Sunrun in the 15th paragraph.) Why Apple Still Hasn't Cracked AI Inside the First Stargate AI Data Center How Coach Handbags Became a Gen Z Status Symbol Anthropic Is Trying to Win the AI Race Without Losing Its Soul Microsoft's CEO on How AI Will Remake Every Company, Including His ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
