Alaska US Sen. Dan Sullivan praises the federal megabill for Alaska: ‘no state fared better’
- Alaska Beacon
- Jul 3
- 30 min read
US Sen. Dan Sullivan praises the federal megabill for Alaska: ‘no state fared better’
Sullivan praised the bill for its promise to boost economic growth, extension of tax cuts, provisions for oil resource development, and support for the U.S. Coast Guard. He defended cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits.
U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, took questions from Alaska reporters on Tuesday, in an hourlong phone news conference. He expressed praise and support for the Trump administration’s agenda with the federal budget megabill, saying, “No state fared better from the bill” than Alaska.
The following transcript of the news conference has been lightly edited to improve readability:
Sen. Dan Sullivan: Thanks everybody back home. You should have gotten a very big, detailed press release that we just sent out. It’s a big bill, a lot there, and what I want to do is kind of cover the highlights, and then be glad to take your questions. But, look, I think this was a huge opportunity for our state. There’s no perfect bill, but a lot that’s in this bill are things that we’ve been working on, not just for months, but for years. And it was a great opportunity with like- minded members of the Senate to really, really advance Alaska’s interests across a whole host of areas. And I think it’s safe to say that no state fared better from this bill than our state, and I’m going to give you a couple of reasons why that’s the case.
No. 1 and first and foremost, across a whole host of areas, to me, this is a jobs bill. This is a bill about growing our economy, and taking advantage of opportunities. You know, in 2017 the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). It was considered historic when we did that in that bill. This bill puts into law lease sales, not just for ANWR again, but for NPR-A (National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska). It goes back to the Trump era, integrated activity plan of 2020, for Cook Inlet and for opportunities for timber sales in the Chugach, in the Tongass. Very importantly, these mandated lease sales are in the law which protects us from, to be frank, administrations, like Joe Biden that we experienced for four years, when they came in with executive orders to try to shut us down. And something, again, we’ve been trying to get done for a long time: Every single one of these big federal areas, ANWR, Cook Inlet, NPR-A, is now at a 70-30 revenue share between the state and the feds. The state getting 70 (percent), and the feds getting 30 (percent). Now these start later in the 2034 period, but for those of you who know our history on resource development, we’ve been trying to get that kind of share more towards the state for decades. So we were able to achieve that across the board. So this is going to be very big for jobs, really important for additional revenues for our state Legislature and state government because of this. And then a whole bunch of other energy provisions, one of which is the new Energy Dominance Council, funded up to a billion dollars. And that’s something that, already, our AKLNG (Alaska liquefied natural gas pipeline) project and the secretary of energy are focused on to help advance that project even more. So big wins on economic growth, resource development. If we get this into law, with President Trump’s executive orders on Alaska, this is going to be a really, really exciting time for our economy.
So next, a real focus here on tax relief for hard-working families and small businesses. As many of you know, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act included across-the-board tax cuts for small businesses, middle-class families, doubling of the child tax credit to support working families — all of that expires at the end of this year. So without this tax reform, this budget reconciliation bill, there would be about a $4.5 trillion tax increase. Alaska’s small businesses would be crushed, middle-class families would be crushed. So by extending the 2017 tax cuts, we avoid a massive tax increase. There’s a whole host of new provisions. These are bills that I co-sponsored to focus on making child care more affordable for families with young children. The list, I won’t go through it, it’s in the press release. It’s a really big part of this bill. Alaskans have been reaching out to our office saying child care, child tax credits, employer-provided child care provisions are really important. When I gave my speech at the Legislature last year, there was a lot of talk about that. We hit historic levels of that (funding) for middle-class families.
I want to get to a couple other areas that I think are important. This is an area that is really important to Alaska, that really hasn’t made hardly any news. I’m the chairman of the commerce committee subcommittee in charge of the Coast Guard. This bill has the biggest investment in the Coast Guard in American history, nearly $25 billion. Think about this, the Coast Guard’s annual budget is about $11.5 billion. So this is a massive investment, and it’s all in Coast Guard assets: 16 new icebreakers – we think icebreakers are really important; 22 new cutters, a $300 million port infrastructure in Juneau to homeport the ice breaker, the Storis. We’re going to have a ribbon cutting in Juneau in August. I’ve been working on these icebreakers, homeporting in our state for 10 years. Forty new helicopters – a lot of these Coast Guard assets are going to be coming to our state. There’s almost $5 billion in additional shore-side infrastructure that will be spread across the country. Again, a lot of that will be coming to communities like Sitka, Seward, Kodiak. These are really, really important elements of the Coast Guard. But as you guys know, when you’re builing out infrastructure, $300 million, for example, in Juneau for the new port facilities, that’s a lot of jobs. So it’s very exciting.
Related to the Coast Guard are the provisions to secure the border and fight fentanyl. As you guys know, we’ve had the highest overdose rates in fentanyl for the last two years. There’s a real big commitment – $46 billion to build the southern wall, $8 billion for Border Patrol facilities. And a lot more for the kind of nuts and bolts of a more efficient immigration system, the immigration court system, federal courts, detention facilities. So the president has already shut down the border, almost 99% decrease in illegal aliens. But we have a huge challenge still with fentanyl, with drug cartels, and this is going to shut that down.
Building up our military – $150 billion for our military. Again, a lot of this goes to taking care of our troops. It builds on the historic pay raise — 14.5% — we had for enlisted personnel last year. That’s the highest pay raise ever. Twenty-five billion dollars for the president’s Golden Dome. That’s missile defense. Some of you may have seen, I introduced my Golden Dome Act about two weeks ago. A lot of that — a significant amount of that is going to be coming to Alaska, because we remain the cornerstone of missile defense. So that’s very exciting for our state. Again, national security, but jobs. One thing that’s in there, it’s kind of a small item, but we think really important. Again, a lot of us have been working on this for years:, $115 million to support the exploration and development of existing Arctic infrastructure, like reopening the Naval Air Station at Adak. So a really, really important component of our military. Nationally, of course, there’s a lot focused on ship building, a lot focused on the Indo-Pacific, but a lot of that is going to help our state.
Another area that’s really important for the country, but also our state: upgrading Alaska and our nation’s aviation system – we have about $12.5 billion for nationwide air traffic control reforms and upgrades, and a significant amount, about $120 million, will be coming to our state building on the $25 million annually that the president and (U.S. Transportation) Secretary Duffy announced for the Alaska FAA Safety Initiative. So we’re building on that.
Then finally, I wanted to mention the area where we’re going to be strengthening Alaska’s health care. You know, you may have seen, there’s a lot of ads back home, I think false ads, talking about me and this bill. Here’s the facts on the bill: It doesn’t touch Medicare, doesn’t touch Social Security, despite some of these false ads saying to the contrary. And the major reform in this bill is the Medicaid reform that centers around limitations and reductions in states’ use of what are called provider taxes and directed payments. States use that to enhance their federal Medicaid payments. That’s where the reforms in Medicaid are. We are the only state that doesn’t use provider taxes or state-directed payments, so the Medicaid programs and federal funds that the state receives are not impacted by the provided tax reforms in this bill, because we don’t do that. We’re the only state that doesn’t do that.
So what we have been able to do, and what we’re working on, even as late as last night is to have a very significant, I got a plus up last night to $50 billion in the legislation for rural hospitals, and rural health care that will go to states. There’s a flat rate that — how much that will go — it’s about $100 million a year. And in discussions with senior administration officials, I am very confident that the state of Alaska, contrary to some of the ads on TV that we’re focused on cutting Medicaid, will be getting at least about $200 million a year for the next five years, in addition to what we’ve already gotten in Medicaid. That is a very significant plus-up that will go to the state, it will be able to be used for Medicaid-backlog challenges. And we think that that’s going to be a really, really important innovation, and that was something that I played a lead role in, in the last several weeks.
There are common sense work reforms that are both in the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and the Medicaid provisions. Some of you might be familiar with the Clinton-era welfare reforms, that was a bipartisan work requirement during the Clinton administration. That was 30 hours a week, this is about a third less. It’s 20 hours a week, for able-bodied individuals who have no dependents, who are not disabled, who do not have mental health challenges, or are not seniors. And there’s a way in which that’s going to work for Medicaid, for SNAP. But we were able to get provisions that take Alaska’s unique challenges with regard to the work requirements. For example, all Alaska Natives are exempt from both work requirements on SNAP and Medicaid. That was something that I worked for hard in this bill. And then there are other provisions that, if you’re showing good-faith efforts to make these work requirements, you get extended periods. So those are important as well.
And then finally, as I mentioned, there’s a whole host of areas where we’re making sure we’re taking care of seniors, elders. There’s a provision it’s about $12,000 per couple for tax deductions to reduce Social Security taxes. This builds on my Social Security Fairness Act that passed at the end of last year, for more take-home money for seniors. And some of the other areas: 100% federal Medicaid match for all Alaska Natives. As I mentioned, complete work requirement exemptions for our Alaska Native communities, many of whom live in rural areas, and that’s very hard to undertake these work requirements. And a final thing that I just wanted to mention. You know, the implementation of this bill, as I mentioned — long night last night, but we’ve been working on some of these things for years.
There’s been some articles, and I want to just clarify it, because it’s important for people to know the way this works in the budget reconciliation process is that you have to make sure the provisions of the bill are compliant with what’s called the Byrd rule. The Byrd rule is a parliamentary statutory procedure dealing with budgetary and tax issues. The provisions of the bill typically have to meet that Byrd rule, but that’s not self-executing. The way in which provisions are challenged is that a Democratic leader, a Republican leader, will go to the parliamentarian and say, ‘Hey, I want this provision stripped out of the bill because it violates the Byrd rule.’ So the leadership on either side of the political aisle here has to proactively go after provisions that they want to strip out of the bill. What I saw, and it was pretty remarkable, pretty shocking, to be perfectly honest. The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, on literally every provision that I’ve talked about that benefited Alaska.
And it is a long list, the ANWR leases, NPR-A, Cook Inlet, a fund for rural hospitals in Alaska and Hawaii, an FMAP (Federal Medical Assistance Percentage) increase – that I’ve been working on for years to get a federal match requirement for Medicaid to be increased in Alaska and Hawaii – ice breakers, homeporting in Juneau, border security, heck, even charitable deductions for Alaska Native whaling communities, every single one of these things — flexible SNAP requirements — Chuck Schumer and the Democrats came after us to try to strip out of this bill. So it’s a little ironic to me, particularly when I’m seeing far-left groups align with Schumer running millions of dollars of ads back home, saying wrongly, ‘Dan Sullivan wants to, you know, cut Medicaid,’ when the only guy cutting Medicaid in Alaska was Chuck Schumer yesterday when he went after our FMAP provision for Alaska and Hawaii, and unfortunately, he was successful. So the bill had a really good federal match increase provisions for Alaska and Hawaii for Medicaid, and Schumer got it removed. That’s hundreds of millions of dollars for Alaskans getting Medicaid money that the minority leader, Democrat leader of the U.S. Senate took out of the bill yesterday. But we kept fighting back, and this bill, like I said, is still a very strong bill, we think, for our state. And appreciate all the interest, and would love to take your questions.
Brian Venua, KMXT: So one of the things I was curious about, (Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa) Murkowski said in her statement, in an email that the bill, while there’s good provisions, it’s not good enough for the rest of our nation and hopes that this isn’t a final draft. I was curious, what are your thoughts about that sentiment? And you know, what are some parts of it that you’re worried about or would change if you had, like, a magic wand?
Sen. Sullivan: Brian, you know, as you can imagine, I’ve been working with Sen. Murkowski on these provisions for years. And last night, you know, we were all working together and our staffs, that’s kind of a daily thing. I didn’t see her statement, but my understanding from what you said, I know for a fact that she thinks, like I do, that this is a strong bill for Alaska, and I think it is. And so, to be honest, that’s been my focus. Heck, even in Washington, D.C., there’s been some news commentary, even some politicians on both sides of the aisle saying, you know, this bill was a home run for Alaska. Some were critical that it was so good for Alaska. I take it as a badge of honor that this bill has a lot of really good things for Alaska, so that was my focus. I will say that, you know, for me, if I had a magic wand – I had been working on this FMAP provision, that’s the federal match for Alaska and Hawaii, because we both have statutory costs of living levels that are higher than any other place in the country. In the FMAP, it’s kind of complicated, but the formula for your FMAP is based solely on per-capita income, and ever since I became a senator, I’m like, that’s unfair. It should be based on the cost of living and the cost of health care. So I was able to get this FMAP provision to increase our federal match to 65%, and would increase Hawaii’s to 15%. I talked to the Hawaiian senators like, hey, let’s do this together. It’s bipartisan, you guys agree with this provision. And for whatever reason, Chuck Schumer tried to strike it. We fought it really hard. It took us two days. We were fighting in front of the parliamentarian saying, this complies with the Byrd rule. We ended up losing. And you know, that was a real loss, not just for Alaskans, but Hawaiians. But we readjusted and had a more robust provision in the rural health care fund that I talked about, that I still think is going to be a couple hundred million a year for Alaska on health care.
Delcenia Cosman, Homer News: How does the new Medicaid work requirement, outlined in this bill, how would that affect seasonal workers such as the Homer fishing fleet and tourism employees that are not necessarily employed year round?
Sen. Sullivan: So the work requirement is 20 hours. As I mentioned, 30 hours was the standard under the Clinton administration, but it doesn’t include, as I mentioned, people with dependents, the elderly, and disabled. So there’s a broad exemption in terms of work requirements. And remember, the work requirement is, it’s not just work – you can volunteer for 20 hours. You can go to training for 20 hours. So there’s a whole host of ways in which you can meet that. And then we had provisions that completely exempted all Alaska Native communities in that but we did make adjustments exactly to your question, for seasonal workers, and we also made adjustments — and these are things that Sen. Murkowski and I got in — for areas of the state that have traditionally high unemployment. So to your question, we did make adjustments in that regard, and we can send you the details of that. I don’t have the provision right now in front of me.
Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Media: Hi there, Senator, the bill extends tax cuts, it creates tax cuts. And as you noted, it spends a lot of money on Coast Guard and defense and other items. It was projected to add more than $3 trillion to the national debt. I’m not sure what the new score is, but are you comfortable with that addition to the national debt?
Sen. Sullivan: Well, look, Liz, when we look at this, there’s this big kind of debate on the baseline, the use of the way in which CBO (Congressional Budget Office) does the score, and the way in which we’re looking at this, this actually has historic savings of about roughly $1.6 trillion, right? And you know, the big debate is that we believe, and you probably saw this debate in Washington, D.C., that the debt and deficit should be marked from the current baseline right and current policy baseline. What that means is — and even the Obama administration had done this during their budget reconciliation — that it assumes that these taxes were not going to continue. So that was the different challenge here and when we’re pretty sure that the tax cuts were going to continue, and so we think the $3 trillion if you look at it from a current policy baseline, is actually quite inaccurate. So as you know, there’s a big debate on this topic, but we think that that $3 trillion assumes that the tax cuts were going to expire, but under current policy, which is the way we viewed this, that’s $3 trillion that we didn’t think was the accurate score under the CBO score.
Ruskin: So do you think this bill lifts us out of debt, that we have no problem with national debt?
Sen. Sullivan: No, I think we have a huge problem in national debt. I mean, to be honest. You know, last year, we had $37 trillion in debt, and we paid out $950 billion in interest, which is more than we paid for the Pentagon. So what we need to be doing, from my perspective, is reforming programs, which you’re seeing with Medicaid, but also growing the economy, and that’s why keeping the tax cuts extended is going to be really important. So this, we believe, is going to reduce the deficit by about $508 billion. And I think the key, as you know, it’s not just $35 trillion, which is a huge number, it’s the percent of GDP that your debt is. And this is going to start, we believe, with the strong economic growth that will come with this, start to reduce the debt. If you remember, CBO doesn’t always get these scores right. When we did the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, they underestimated the growth by about one and a half (percentage) points, and they underestimated the revenues that would come in by about $1.4 trillion. So the key is, you got to have savings, which this bill does, but you can’t grow your way out of a … $35 trillion debt, you got to — I’m sorry, you can’t cut your way out. You got to grow your way out. So the key here is strong economic growth.
Iris Samuels, Anchorage Daily News: So my question is about Medicaid in Alaska, we’ve heard from a lot of concern that the new eligibility requirements would cause thousands of eligible Alaskans to lose access to Medicaid. So my question for you, Senator, is do you think that the number of uninsured Alaskans is going to increase after the passage of this bill?
Sen. Sullivan: So do you mean uninsured in terms of people not receiving Medicaid, or just uninsured as it relates to another issue?
Samuels: The number of Alaskans who don’t have health insurance. So if you also want to address the potential expiration of enhanced premium tax credits, that would also be helpful.
Sen. Sullivan: Yeah, look, I think the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits is an important issue, and it wasn’t addressed in this bill. And as you know, that expires at the end of the year, and I think it’s something that I’m hopeful that there’s going to be a bipartisan consensus to address that, but it wasn’t. And to be honest, I think that some of the issues related to that, you know, in a bill like this, you can’t fit everything under the constraints of the Byrd rule. There’s a lot of things here, like I said, my FMAP provision that got taken out of this bill when Schumer challenged it. So that’s one that I don’t think would fit under here, but I think it’s an important issue that we have to look at. It’s kind of a cliff, I don’t think we should have a cliff in terms of those people who are relying on that for their health care. In terms of the backlog for Medicaid. I actually think this bill is going to help that. Again, we are not like other parts of the state, going to see any kind of dramatic reduction, any kind of reduction in our Medicaid federal dollars, because we don’t use provider taxes, and we don’t use state-directed payments, which is where all the reforms are for this bill. So the estimates of about $200 million a year from this rural health provider fund that’s in the bill. It’s a $50 billion fund. I was able to get that doubled in the last couple days, because I think it’s very important for rural communities. I think that that is actually an opportunity for our state to undertake reforms to get at the (application processing) backlog with a lot of that money. We’ve been talking to the governor and his team, and I think that they see that it’s an opportunity.
You know, there have been some stories that with the work requirement, some people might choose not to either work or volunteer, or go to school, or go to training for 20 hours a week. And if they choose not to do that, and they are eligible for the work requirement, you could see Medicaid for those individuals slipping. But we don’t think that that’s going to be a high number. And those are really the only areas in which I could see a Medicaid slippage in the state, because we’re not losing funding. To the contrary, with the estimated $200 million plus, I think it’s being more than $200 million a year from this fund. The state’s going to have a lot of opportunities to make reforms to the program. It’ll make it more efficient and serviceable for the people.
James Brooks, Alaska Beacon: Senator, I talked to Sen.Murkowski, and she said she agonized over her decision whether to vote for or against this. Was there ever a point where you questioned whether you would vote for it, and if so, what was it over?
Sen. Sullivan: Yeah, James, I did. Look, so I know I kind of sound like a broken record, but I’ve been really, really, really focused on this FMAP provision for Alaska. And again, I don’t want to sound too technical, but it’s the federal match requirement for Medicaid. We have one of the lowest matches in the country. We used to be 50%: 50% state and 50% federal. That’s the lowest in America. We’re about 51% right now, which is still really low. And it would always really bug me, because that formula is just pure per-capita income. That’s how they do it, which is why we have a low formula. It doesn’t take into account your cost of living, and it doesn’t take into account the high cost of health care delivery, which we have in those two categories, the highest in the country. So I’ve always said, ‘Hey, we need a much higher FMAP.’ And I’ve been working on this for years, because I just think it’s unfair to Alaska. There’s states that have 80-20 (percent) if you can believe that. Certain states have statutory FMAP – DC has a 70% statutory FMAP. The American territories, Marianas, Virgin Islands, have like an 80% FMAP, and we’re at 50 (percent). So I literally went all the way to very senior folks in the administration and all my Republican colleagues, saying, ‘I need this provision.’ And I explained why, and I got support from the White House, and I got support from all my Republican colleagues, and my provision was actually us and Hawaii, because they had similar challenges. And I will tell you when it got stripped out by Sen. Schumer, it was a giant, enormous frustration of mine, because I’ve been working on this and I care really deeply about this issue. I’ve been working on this issue almost since I got to the Senate. So I had a little bit of a dark night of the soul when that happened. And then we tried to fix it several times, different kind of tweaks and the parliamentarian and the Democrats kept challenging it and we kept losing. So I’m not sure it was a moment where I was going to say, ‘I’m not going to do this,’ but it was a moment of enormous disappointment when you’re trying it and you’re very close. Because remember, this was in the bill, my FMAP provision was in the budget reconciliation bill that we voted to get on four days ago. And when you work hard on something that you know is right for the people you represent, and then it kind of goes down the drai: It was frustrating, very, very frustrating to me. And we’ll re-attack it. The way I did it was, it was my initiative to get permission from my colleagues to plus-up this rural fund. It’s a very big rural fund now, $50 billion and to get essentially the equivalent for Alaska of what my FMAP provision would have been. My FMAP provision would have been about an additional $180 million a year for Alaska for Medicaid. And this rural fund actually gets more for us, about $200 million probably it might even go up to almost $300 million, so that was the moment. That’s a long answer, but I’ve been working on this issue for a really, really long time. I feel very passionate about it. And I was close, and it slipped away from me, because Schumer actually was the one who took it out, right? And it’s very ironic. You watch all these ads, you guys are seeing them ‘Dan Sullivan supposedly cutting Medicaid.’ That’s the false attack by Schumer’s affiliated groups. And you know, he’s the only guy cutting Medicaid in Alaska. I mean, he did it the other night, and it was really disheartening for me.
Jack Barnwell, Fairbanks Daily News Miner: Senator, this bill calls for the eventual sunsetting of the clean energy tax credit. Do you have any concerns about how that will affect projects in rural Alaska that might rely on these projects, and don’t have any direct benefit from natural gas or the high diesel and fuel rates costs?
Sen. Sullivan: Yeah, Jack, it’s a really good question. And I will tell you, it was a big component of the debate that was going on. We were able to get a much more generous kind of runway than what was in the House bill that came over. The House bill had this provision that was much more stringent on when the subsidies for those kinds of renewable projects would go away, and we were able to extend that. And then you may have seen there was also this provision in the House bill that they called an excise tax that was kind of a penalty. We got that actually removed in the Senate bill yesterday. And you know, one of the things that we were making the argument on, particularly for Alaska, is that our construction season and start for the timeline of these production and investment tax credits is so short up here. And that we needed an extended and better, phased-out timeline. We did get that to some degree, certainly an improvement from the House bill, but it’s still, I think, a concern to some. Now, as you know, some of these subsidies have been going on for many, many years, and it’s important for some of these industries to not have to rely on it. But I think the timeline extension was what we were trying to achieve and we got that some degree. And getting rid of this excise tax, which is essentially a penalty, we did achieve that in the bill. So good question. A lot of debate on this over the last several weeks, and that’s where we ended up.
Katie Stavick, Mat-Su Frontiersman: I just wanted to know, because of all the changes to the Senate version of the bill and now it goes back to the House. Are you worried at all about the bill not passing the House as it is now?
Sen. Sullivan: Yeah, Katie, it’s obviously the million dollar question. So as you probably have seen, on budget reconciliation, there’s a lot of back and forth, right? Before you go to the reconciliation part of the bill, you have to do what’s called a budget resolution. And we were doing that in the spring. We passed that in the Senate. We sent it back to the House. They sent it back to us. Those are the precursors to getting on the bill itself, the budget reconciliation bill. And the reason all this is important, it’s under the 1974 Budget Control Act, and Democrats and Republicans both use that act, the reason it’s important that you have to comply with the procedures and comply with the Byrd Rule — which is why it’s so important — is that in the Senate, you only have to get 51 senators to pass these kind of provisions. You know, I get along with my good Democratic friends in the Senate, but none of them would ever support the provisions that we got on ANWR, that we got on NPR-A, that we got on Cook Inlet, they just wouldn’t, right? So we needed this budget reconciliation bill to just be able to have Republican senators and House members vote and pass legislation that fits within the Byrd rule, so there’s a 51 Senate threshold. So that’s why all this is really important, that rules are quite arcane, but there’s already been a lot of back and forth between the House and Senate on the resolutions. Now this is the real, you know, the real live bill. You might remember the budget reconciliation bill started in the House. It came over to us (the Senate).
It’s kind of interesting, the speaker of the House came over to one of our lunches a couple weeks ago and said, ‘Hey, Senators, we really want you to not change this at all.’ Well, we tried to not change it much, but we changed it some, and now it’s going to go back over there. I think, you know, one goal would be for them to just pass it as is, but that’s going to be up to the speaker and the members of the House. But I think he’s moving forward. I know (Alaska U.S. Rep.) Nick Begich is back in D.C. If they can’t get to passing our legislation, as is, they could pass another version, and then we would go into what’s called a conference. Where leaders in the Senate, leaders in the House would meet, would try to hash out our differences. That’s a possibility, but I think certainly our preference in the Senate at this juncture is for the House to take our provision and pass it, or take our bill and pass it. I think the House Rules Committee already met today, and I think the speaker is really wasting no time on moving forward on our bill, and I hope that they can pass it.
Trill Gates, ABC & FOX Alaska: Hi there, Senator, I had a question about Planned Parenthood. It’s my understanding two of the last Planned Parenthood locations, one in Anchorage, one in Fairbanks in our state, are now being threatened of being closed with this bill. Where will Alaskans in need of their services go?
Sen. Sullivan: I mean, there’s a lot of, I think there are other options with regard to services — community health centers throughout the state, which are all over the state. And I think the discussion, Trill, I think it used to be very bipartisan on what was called the Hyde Amendment, which was that federal funds should not be used to provide abortions. And that’s still the law of the land, but I think in terms of other services, for other health care type services — hospitals, community health centers, I think are areas in which those kinds of services can be provided.
Jeff Landfield, Alaska Landmine: I have more of a philosophical question. You know, we have the highest SNAP error rate, it was 60% I think, it might be down a little bit, but it’s much higher than the national average. And, you know, a third of the state is on Medicaid, and FMAP and the Indian Health Service, it’s a 100% match. Do you think the state needs to take steps to try to fix these problems and have people not so reliant on the federal government for health care and food stamps?
Sen. Sullivan: Well, Jeff, I think it’s a really important question. And our error rate on the SNAP provision the last couple years has been the highest in the country by far. It was 60% last year, which there’s not another state that’s even close to that. One of the things that we wanted to do on the SNAP provision we did get this in there, was to give states like ours with high error rates more time to fix the challenge. And I know the governor and the state Legislature are working on that. We were talking to the secretary of agriculture — Sen. Murkowski and I — with a provision we got in there that will grant her, essentially, the authority to let us go out to 2030 on fixing our error rate before any of the cost share provisions in the bill kicked in. And that was an important reform that we got in the bill. It was, you know, kind of trying to take care of our state in terms of getting control over this error rate, getting systems in place. You know, our error rate wasn’t always that high pre-COVID it was about 7% so I think COVID really undermined what happened in Alaska.
So that’s one issue, and that’s a big part of the bill, and some of the somewhat Alaska-specific provisions that we got in the bill. The other one, though, I think, is a really important one, which is why I started my press conference with talking about private sector-led growth, giant great opportunities that are in this bill, historic opportunities that are in this bill. And I think you’re asking a really important question, because one thing that’s important is to make sure, and I did this in my speech to the Alaska Legislature earlier this year, is to say, ‘Hey, one of our goals should be to lift people off these programs.’ Remember Medicaid, if you’re disabled, pregnant, disabled, that’s who it was originally focused on. But, you know, you have the expansion population, which is 138% above the poverty level, able bodied. And you know, one of the goals I think we should talk about more is people in that category. Hey, there’s an opportunity with a really good job with the laborers or a great union that’s doing work on the (North) Slope. You get that job, you get great health care from the union, you get great private health care. You get off Medicaid, you have a stronger income coming in. So it’s an important issue that I think we need to remember that having more and more people on Medicaid and SNAP shouldn’t be the goal. Those are safety nets that are very important, and I think they’re for Alaska, they are reinforced in this bill. But overall, I think we want to encourage people to be able to have jobs that move forward and get them, get them off those kinds of programs.
And I also think that the work requirements are reforms that help in that way. Remember the Clinton administration did this with welfare reform, with 30 hours a week. It was considered controversial. I think a lot of people saw that it worked. This is about a third less in terms of requirement: 20 hours a week. And there’s a lot of ways in which individuals can meet that requirement. They can do volunteering, they can do training, they can go to school, they can get a job. So I think these kinds of reforms help in that direction that you’re asking and it’s important.
Ashlyn O’Hara, KDLL: Hi, Senator, I’d like to know more about the energy dominance financing program. I work for KDLL on the Kenai Peninsula, and there’s, of course, tremendous interest here about the Alaska LNG project. And are you able to be specific about how exactly the program would accelerate momentum on the project, and I guess as a kind of second part of that, or is it your intention to seek federal capital beyond the existing federal loan guarantees?
Sen. Sullivan: Ashlyn, great question, and the answer to your question is yes. One of the things that we are doing right now with Glenfarne (Group) and the Department of Defense is trying to see if there’s a way in which the Department of Defense can be a buyer of gas that would come down through the pipeline. That could dramatically lower the cost of capital, with regard to having a very big purchaser. Alaska LNG (pipeline) is going right past a lot of our military bases, so this is an issue I’ve raised with (U.S. Defense) Secretary Hegseth recently. I raised it in a breakfast I had with the deputy secretary of defense, just three weeks ago, and I raised it in a hearing with the assistant secretary for installations in charge of the Department of Defense. So the senior leaders of the Pentagon are very aware of this opportunity, and that Glenfarne is quite interested in that.
And then, with regard to the Energy Dominance Council, what we did is we took, I think it’s called the Section 1706 provision that was in the IRA Act (Inflation Reduction Act), and we kind of reformed that to look at much bigger projects that relates to kind of big infrastructure, so nuclear, LNG and pipeline facilities, that can help increase capacity and base-load energy. That’s kind of the new way in which this 1706 energy dominance fund was reformed in the bill, and we got it capitalized with about a billion dollars. Which was important, because I was on a conference call with (U.S. Energy) Secretary Wright, and that’s the capitalization in the program. He is very interested in looking at the AKLNG project as one of the projects by which they would use this new energy dominance financing mechanism.
So they’re quite aware of it. We got a decent amount of money in it. I had a conference call with the secretary and the governor just two weeks ago. We are still trying to get the Department of Energy to set up the loan guarantees that Sen. Murkowski and I got in the bipartisan infrastructure bill several years ago. The Biden Administration never set that program up. It was four years of asking Secretary Granholm, hey, it’s in the law. We got it passed. You guys need to set it up. And they just kind of gave us the Heisman for four years. So we’re trying to get Secretary Wright and his team to set it up. So to answer your questions, you can kind of tell there are several different government financing angles that we are looking at. And if this law passes, this Energy Dominance Council will be a new one, and I think the secretary would like to target AKLNG as one of his projects.
Eric Stone, Alaska Public Media: Thanks, Senator. So I wanted to follow up on the idea that we’ll grow our way out of debt with the tax cuts. So like debt grew by $2.7 trillion between, shortly after the passage of the 2017 tax cuts, I’m going, you know, Jan. 1, 2018, to Jan. 1, 2020, this is before COVID. The debt grew by $2.7 trillion in that time. Why do you believe that extending these tax cuts further will, you know, help us grow our way out of debt, rather than adding to the national debt?
Sen. Sullivan: Because I don’t think you can cut your way out of a $36 trillion national debt, but I think the combination of savings – which this bill has very historic savings, about $1.6 trillion over 10 years – and growth, is really the key. And I think we’ve seen that throughout our country’s history. We’ve had different periods where we’ve had a very, very high debt-to-GDP ratio. That’s really the key indicator. Sometimes the numbers look daunting, but it’s really a measure of what your GDP is. And the White House Council of Economic Advisers thinks that this will help the GDP — debt-to-GDP go under 97%, with this bill because of the growth. It’ll be generated by it. And without it, they think it would be, you know, much higher, going about over 110%.
So we’ve done this before, we grew out of a huge debt-to-GDP after World War II. I think on the growth side, after the 2017 tax cuts, you know, we were hitting 3% GDP growth. We were bringing in huge revenues. I think pre-tax cuts, it was about, I was looking at the numbers the other day, was about $3.5 trillion. It went up to almost $5 trillion, and then COVID hit and, you know, kind of all hell broke loose. So we had a very good, long meeting with the secretary of the treasury twice last week, and went through a lot of these numbers, and the Treasury Department thinks that we can hit them. But look, you never know. I mean, you’re asking a very fair question. There’s no doubt about it. But I think if you look at our history, the way you get out of these kinds of big holes, and we’re in a huge hole, is growth, is really, really the key.
Margaret Bauman, Cordova Times: Senator Sullivan, I want to go back to something you said at the beginning of the news conference, that “no state has fared better in this bill.” And you know, regarding issues like Medicaid and other economic issues, you’re very well traveled, and I just wonder how fair you think this is. Because the cost of living is high in Alaska, but there are absolutely pockets of extreme poverty all over this country. They’re in logging communities in the Rockies, they’re in Appalachia, they’re in little towns and big cities all over the country, because of the economic impact on individual families. There are families out there that are homeless, that don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and, you know, your obligation is to Alaska. But should Alaska be getting a hell of a better deal on all this than other states? Thank you.
Sen. Sullivan: Well, you’re right. I am focused on Alaska, and it’s hard to focus on other places. You’re right about there are other pockets of the country that have extreme poverty. We have extreme poverty, which is why, you know, we work really hard to get exemptions in so many parts of the legislation that relates to our state. And the other thing that we — I was really, really focused on, I’ve done it for a long time, as I mentioned this FMAP issue, but really, really pushed and got a big plus-up to the provider fund for rural hospitals and rural health care. That is a big deal to me. And in that fund, $50 billion is going to help states across America. As a matter of fact, the way in which we structure that fund, and my team and I were the ones who wrote the formula. We’re proud of this. We did not do it per capita. We’ve been down that road before.
This fund has a minimum for every state across America, and that’s a $100 million minimum. Every state gets that. So to your question, that was something that my team and I devised, pushed hard on, funded significantly, and that helps every state. That’s not just an Alaska thing, but that’s going to help us huge. Because when you’re not per-capita income, sometimes we get the raw end of the deal on that.
So, look, I’m not going to apologize for working hard for our state. That’s just my opinion. But back in D.C., there was a lot of chatter on the internet and stuff on how Alaska did really well in this bill: the energy part, the Coast Guard part, the military part, the tax part, the rural hospital fund. But I also think and I think you guys would all agree, we’ve been overlooked by the federal government, particularly in terms of infrastructure and health care, for years. Which is why I’m so obsessed with this FMAP provision, and when I couldn’t get it, when Schumer stripped it from the bill, we pivoted to this rural fund as a way to get those kinds of funds that we think our state needs. So it’s a good question, but as you can imagine, as a senator, I’m very, very, very focused on the people I represent. But I will say some of the initiatives that our team led on, like this big rural fund, are going to help everybody.
• Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
