Murkowski anticipates ‘higher leadership’ on Appropriations with Collins exit - Live Updates
POLITICO · Katherine Tully-McManus ·
She said she wants to “get back to governing in the middle.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski will be stepping up into a top role on the Senate Appropriations Committee, she signaled in an interview with a local radio station in Alaska on Thursday. The Alaska Republican is next in line for the top Republican slot on the powerful spending panel after Sen. Susan Collins’ (R-Maine) defeat in Tuesday’s midterm elections. She currently serves as chair of the Interior-Environment subcommittee. “I'm going to have an opportunity, not one that I was looking forward to,” Murkowski told radio station KNOM in Alaska. She is close with Collins and said the outgoing chair “has really tried extraordinarily hard to get the appropriations process on a better path.” But with Collins' defeat at the ballot box on Tuesday, “that is going to be putting me in a position of higher leadership on the Appropriations Committee.” Murkowski, even more than Collins, has a long track record of flexing her independence from her party and the Trump administration. But she said she is not looking to be a firebrand in next year’s divided government. “We've got to get back to governing in the middle. And you all know this is where I feel pretty comfortable,” she told the Alaska radio station in Nome. “I want to try to be a problem solver. I want to try to help people. I don't want to throw political rhetorical bombs at one another and get nothing done.” Murkowski said she wants to be involved in “making things happen for the good of the whole, to get the Senate functioning again.” This year, the Senate did not mark up a single fiscal 2027 spending bill in committee. She also warned Democrats against making every day on Capitol Hill an exercise in retribution against President Donald Trump. “I hope that the Democrats don't mess this up,” she said.
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