Remember Tom Coburn's failed attempt to shift half a billion tax dollars from two bridges to nowhere in Alaska to fixing the heavily travelled Lake Pontchartrain Bridge damaged by Hurricane Katrina? Here is the response he got from Ted Stevens, R-Alaska:
This is the first time I ahve seen any attempt by any senator to treat my state in a way differently from any other state."
Emphasis added by me, remember that idea, of special/different treatment and how bad it is.
His Junior partner, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska chimed in as well:
(it is)very difficult to stand here as an Alaskan and not take personally (a proposal) that is going to isolate us.
That was Oct. 20.
Merely 2 weeks later, these two champions of states being treated the same and no special treatment SOUGHT SPECIAL TREATMENT in regard to a budget bill that would impose modest cuts to out of control entitlement programs like Medicaid. Buried in this bill is a provision treats Alaska "differently from any other state." This time, it originated from the Alaskans themselves.
See, in the bill, Senate leaders propposed asssisting Katrina victims by having the government assume 100% of health costs incurred by Medicaid eligible victims.
The Alaskan duo, apparently resenting this special treatment for Katrina victims, quietly convinced the Senate Finace Committee to insert a pprovision adding similar upward adjustment in the Medicaid payment to their state. So, atop the 1/2 billion in gas tax revenues spent on bridges to nowhere, add another 130 million in Medicaid costs that would again, isolate Alaska from the other states.
This benefit to a state with a notorious light tax burden, and whose residents recently received 845.76 each in dividends from Oil Production revenues on the North slope.
The Anchorage Daily News Sees the hypocrisy when it opined: "The message much of the rest of the country is getting about Alaska is one of gluttony at the federal trough." Well, at least about your senators.
