Yereth Rosen
Alaska Beacon
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, Republican, delivered a vigorous defense on Monday, Nov. 24 of the Trump administration’s controversial budget and tax bill and its resource development decisions.
The bill, called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is a cornerstone of President Donald Trump’s policies. In a speech to the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, Sullivan said it is so beneficial to Alaska that it could be called the “Alaska Opportunity Act.”
“I think it’s going to turn out to be one of the most important pieces of legislation for our state in a very long time,” he said.
Congress passed the bill over the summer, and Trump signed it into law on July 4.
Sullivan, in his speech to the chamber, listed several funding commitments in the bill that he said will benefit Alaska, including commitments to the U.S. Coast Guard and its icebreaker fleet, to the military branches and to the Federal Aviation Administration.
But much of Sullivan’s speech was devoted to arguments trying to counter criticism of the bill’s impacts to federal health and public assistance programs.
Accusations that the bill cut Medicaid and other health care programs, in Alaska and elsewhere, are inaccurate, said Sullivan, who has already been the subject of political attack ads on the subject.
“This bill, we are very confident, is going to strengthen, not weaken, Alaska’s health care system,” he told the chamber audience.
Rather than cut benefits, the bill cuts waste, Sullivan said. There are several special provisions that protect Alaska from some of the biggest changes in the safety net, he added.
Those changes that do apply to Alaska, such as a 20-hour-per-week work requirement for benefits, are fair, he said. Alaska expanded eligibility to its Medicaid program under Gov. Bill Walker.
“If you’re a young man and you’re able-bodied, you have no dependents and you’re 28 years old, and you’re on the Medicaid expansion population, and you’re told to go work or train or volunteer for 20 hours, and you don’t do it, you lose your Medicaid,” Sullivan said. “That’s not a cut. That is a choice.”
But several experts say the cumulative effects of the bill will force people off of health coverage through price increases and bureaucratic requirements.
“HR1 was designed to push Americans out of Medicaid in order to reach cost savings,” state Rep. Genevieve Mina, D-Anchorage, said by email, referring to the bill number. Mina, who chairs the House Health and Social Services Committee, listened to Sullivan’s speech.
The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 25,000 Alaskans will lose health insurance coverage through the combined provisions in the bill. That amounts to a 3% reduction in the insured population. Nationally, about 10 million people are expected to lose health insurance coverage, according to the foundation.
Mina said the state will face increased costs through a different provision: the requirement that eligibility redetermination decisions be made every six months instead of annually, as is the case now. Requiring the state Division of Public Assistance to make those determinations twice a year instead of annually will add to the administrative burden and potentially increase backlogs that are already a problem in the state, she said.
In an August presentation at a conference in Juneau, the head of the Alaska Hospital and Healthcare Association also warned of thousands of people losing health coverage simply because they will be priced out of it.
Jared Kosin, president of the association, and others speaking at the event said the failure of Congress to extend tax benefits for people insured under the Affordable Care Act will cause premiums to skyrocket and prompt people to drop coverage.
Those benefits, known as enhanced premium tax credits, are in addition to the original tax subsidies provided by the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Pending expiration of those credits has already caused Affordable Care Act policy premiums to rise dramatically for small businesses and self-employed Alaskans. Without an extension of the credits, which expire at the end of the year, premiums for insurance obtained under the Affordable Care Act will more than double nationally, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The issue was a major factor in the recent record-long federal government shutdown. Congressional Democrats tried unsuccessfully to extend the enhanced credits.
‘Aggressive’ oil leasing schedule
Energy development was another theme of Sullivan’s pitch for the bill.
He touted its mandatory oil and gas lease sales for the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, on the western side of the North Slope, and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, on the eastern side of the North Slope, as well as in federal waters of Cook Inlet.
Those lease sales will be held on a near-annual basis, Sullivan said, a schedule that he termed “very aggressive.” He said the bill will prevent future administrations from cutting back on leasing.
“The feds have to do it,” he added. “So if there’s another president coming along in three years saying, ‘Hey, I want to shut down Alaska in terms of executive orders,’ can’t do it, right? This is in the law for the next 10 years.”
That was a reference to former President Joe Biden, who Sullivan said “probably killed thousands of jobs on Day One” through environmental executive orders. The Biden policies were immediately reversed by President Donald Trump on the first day of his second term, notably in an executive order titled Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.
“Whether you like President Trump, whether you don’t like President Trump, doesn’t matter. Read this executive order. This is an unmitigated good for our state,” Sullivan said.
He also touted the bill’s provisions providing incentives for natural gas infrastructure. That will help advance the pipeline project that has been long desired by generations of Alaska leaders and would take now-stranded natural gas from the North Slope to a tidewater terminal in Southcentral Alaska for shipment by tanker to Asian markets from there.
Sullivan credited Trump with pushing for the gas pipeline, a megaproject proposed and promoted since the 1970s but never deemed economic. The administration has “just been pedal to the metal” on pressing Asian governments to support the project, the senator said.
“And, I will tell you, I’ve never seen more momentum and us closer,” he said.
He acknowledged public skepticism about the gas pipeline’s prospects. “I know I get the eye roll here, again. We’ve been talking about this for half a century, true, but what’s the alternative?” he said. Imported natural gas, he said, will be much more costly than natural gas produced in-state.
But renewable energy development, long considered important for supporting Southcentral Alaska communities facing possible shortages in Cook Inlet natural gas supplies, fared poorly in the bill.
The bill gutted federal support for renewable energy development that is keenly desired in much of Alaska, especially rural areas where fossil fuel-based energy prices are high and supplies are precarious. The bill mandates a phase-out to tax credits that help make wind and solar energy projects affordable. And the bill’s provisions added to Trump administration actions that canceled $280 million in previously awarded Alaska environmental grants, about half of which was for renewable energy projects. Some of those projects had been destined for remote rural communities otherwise dependent on diesel fuel delivered by barge or airplane.
Sullivan’s colleague, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, negotiated a compromise that kept the renewable energy tax credits in place for 12 months rather than repealing them outright. However, shortly after President Trump signed the bill, he and members of his administration issued orders that reduced federal support for renewable energy projects. Murkowski later said she felt “cheated” because it undermined her compromise.
Environmentalists have been particularly critical of the energy provisions.
“This legislation is regarded as one of the most destructive environmental bills to date,” the Alaska Center, an Anchorage-based conservation group, says on its website. The bill “puts an end date on tax credits for wind and solar energy, and repeals millions in unspent funds for everything from pollution control to displacement assistance for those on the front lines of the climate crisis.”
Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Claire Stremple for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com.