Former governors routinely supplied information on tax and royalty settlements to the Legislature, but Dunleavy claims the Division of Legislative Audit should be able to figure out what the files say without putting demands on Crum.
This Dunleavy letter appears to be an incompetent effort to shield Crum, who dreams of being Gov. Crum.
Compare the tone and substance to this letter by the legislative leaders.
Crum claims the Legislature has the right to the raw data, but the department is not required to format the data or translate the numbers.
This makes the data useless and hides the actions of the state. Hundreds of millions or billions are involved.
Dunleavy’s legacy as Alaska’s Worst Governor looks more solid by the day.
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SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI should add an entire new chapter to her autobiography to explain why she sold her vote Saturday on the giant GOP tax scam and the Alaska kickbacks inserted in secret to buy her off. As so often in the past, Murkowski caved, allowing the GOP tax scam to move forward for debate in the Senate.
There is a $40,000 increase in tax exemptions for whaling captains, a new tax exemption for fishermen in western Alaska, an Alaska exemption for work requirements for those on food assistance and more. “And several provisions have been added that would funnel federal dollars to Alaskan health care providers,” the New York Times reported.
“To soften the blow to Alaska of the Medicaid cuts in the bill, a new provision governing the share of medical bills paid by the federal government says that Alaska’s rate should be 25 percent higher than what a typical state gets. (It is such a large increase that the bill also specifies that the payment can’t go higher than 100 percent of the state’s medical bills.) Alaska’s other Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, has been advocating this policy change for several years.”
“The measure also boosts Medicare payments to certain medical providers for care ‘furnished in Alaska and Hawaii.’”
Murkowski sold her vote is helping advance the bill to debate. The vote was 51-49 to begin debate. It’s possible that Murkowski will claim she is undecided on final passage.
She and Sullivan are going to have to explain why Alaska deserves kickbacks denied to hundreds of millions of Americans in other states. In particular, I suspect the whaling captain subsidy will be the subject of much national criticism. Deservedly so.
She signed onto the Republican plan to cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid, harming poor people elsewhere in America in exchange for benefits for Alaska that will be hard to defend or explain. Shame on her. This is a terrible way to make national policy. It’s really a corrupt bargain, given the impact on people in other states. It’s what we should expect from Trump’s party.
I’m sure she is concerned, however.
The public had no chance to examine or comment on the secret deals the Republicans made to buy Murkowski’s vote.
Sullivan, whose vote was never in doubt and didn’t have to be bought, abandoned his usual lame excuse that he can’t take a position on a bill that no one has had time to read. This scam, rewritten and rushed like grease through a goose, contains the tax cut for billionaires that he wants.
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(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
