Millions in Pork: RINO Lisa Murkowski Wins Big in Dem Spending Plan

Back in March, both houses of Congress passed H.R.2471, also known as the Consolidated Appropriations Act. That bill funds the government through September and also contains quite a bit of pork for certain politicians and their districts.

Particularly, it contained lots of spending “pork” for Senator Murkowski, the RINO who’s struggling to hold off a Trump-backed challenger in Alaska. According to Just the News, she got $10 million for a hotel demolition and milliions of more dollars for other Alaskan interests.

Further, as Murkowski’s website proudly states, Murkowski, in addition to receiving $10 million for a hotel demolition, Alaska is getting millions upon millions more in pork, including:

• Alakanuk: $9.9 million for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium to provide basic water and wastewater infrastructure to homes that have not had it previously. Residents currently rely on rain, river, or hauled water for drinking water and use honey buckets and on-property bunkers for their wastewater disposal.
• Anchorage (USGS): $1 million to aid the development of an earthquake early warning system.
• Statewide (Rossia): $350,000 to provide funds to repair and rehabilitate sites listed on the National Register for Historic Places.
• Statewide (Fish and Wildlife Service): $750,000 for an Invasive Species Early Detection Rapid Response Strike Team in southcentral Alaska.
• Statewide (State of Alaska, Division of Forestry): $3.25 million to coordinate and implement forest management activities across various jurisdictions to meet the wildfire prevention, mitigation, response, and restoration objectives in the State of Alaska’s Forest Action Plan. 
• Anchorage: $1 million for the Alaska Native Justice Center to provide training and technical assistance (TTA) as well as organizational support materials to help address public safety, justice, and child welfare. 
• Chugach National Forest: $5.77 million for the maintenance, construction, and restoration of portions of the Iditarod Trail.
• Klawock: $1.22 million to purchase needed landfill infrastructure and associated maintenance costs for the cities of Klawock, Craig, and Coffman Cove to comply with new garbage removal requirements.
• Kodiak: $3.25 million to replace a failing wastewater lift station.
• Fairbanks: $10 million to assess known contamination, remediate, and demolish the Polaris Building, which poses significant health and safety risks to the Fairbanks community. 
• Fairbanks (University of Alaska Fairbanks): $2 million to the University to review the feasibility of establishing PFAS treatment facilities across the State of Alaska, including mobile treatment systems. 
• Fairbanks (Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center): $250,000 to work in partnership with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to assess where domestic violence shelters are necessary in rural Alaska. 
• Galena: $3.66 million to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium to administer piped water and sewer services to homes that currently do not have access to these services and rely on hauling water from a community water point and honey buckets.
• Grayling: $4.34 million for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium to replace a failing water distribution system that freezes and breaks, leading to water shortages in the community and inability to keep the water storage tank full. 
• Juneau: $800,000 for the City and Borough of Juneau to reroute influent piping around obsolete solids separation equipment. 
• Juneau (Seaalaska Heritage Institute): $500,000 to help support the Kootéeya Deiyi project, which will create a trail of totem poles and storyboards representing Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian clans along the Juneau waterfront. The project is expected to help increase economic development while highlighting and preserving Native art and culture, consistent with the goals of the NATIVE Act (P.L. 114-221).
• Kenai: $385,000 to implement the community’s wildfire hazard mitigation plan, which includes addressing spruce bark beetle infestation that can lead to catastrophic wildfire. 
• Kenai Peninsula Borough: $3.36 million to expand the leachate evaporation capacity at the landfill in order to help the landfill continue to meet regulatory requirements.
• Ketchikan: $1.25 million to repair the decaying Schoenber Culvert to avoid its failure and potential subsequent discharges of untreated wastewater.
• King Cove: $3 million to build needed capacity and purchase new processing equipment for the landfill, which is currently nearing capacity. 
• King Cove: $5.2 million for construction of five new water wells and corresponding upgrades to the distribution system, storage tank, and control systems.
• Kodiak: $50,000 for the Kodiak Area Native Association to study the public health and environmental impacts of harmful algal blooms in the region. 
• Matanuska-Susitna Borough: $385,000 to implement the community’s fire reduction initiative to address spruce bark beetle infestation, which can lead to catastrophic wildfire.
• Metlakatla: $780,000 to improve solid waste management, including the reduction of volume by using a multi-use portable shredder, for the safety and health of the residents and members of the Metlakatla Indian Community. 
• Russian Mission: $5.22 million for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium to build a new landfill because the current one is at capacity and causing trash to spill directly into the community.
• Seward: $1.1 million for the Alaska Sealife Center to study marine animal health and changing oceans.
• Skagway: $10.2 million to expand capacity at the Wastewater Treatment Plant, which has recently experienced capacity difficulties due to increased use. 
• Stebbins: $6.2 million for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium to administer a piped water and wastewater distribution system. Residents currently haul water and use honey buckets.
• Tununak: $8.3 million to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium for the construction of water and sewer infrastructure to serve 90 homes; this infrastructure will include a combined above and below ground water system, below grade gravity sewer system, residential service lines, and household plumbing, as well as a community drain field. 
• Wrangell: $2.08 million to the City & Borough of Wrangell to fund a connection pipe between the Upper Reservoir and the Water Treatment Plant as a means of accessing the upper reservoir’s water.

For what else would the government be doing but spending millions on a hotel in Alaska? Surely that’s what the average taxpayer in Georgia or Louisiana thinks his tax dollars are going toward when he pays his tax bill each year: random spending for state-level issues in Alaska. What a waste.

Murkowski, however, proudly cheered the massive amount of pork awarded her state, saying in a statement released on her website:

“Through this omnibus bill, I’ve again used my leadership role on the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee to address many of Alaska’s needs, while holding off riders that would have harmed our state’s resource industry. We fully fund the PILT program, direct significant funding to clean drinking water and wastewater infrastructure, provide for wildfire mitigation and natural hazards monitoring, and invest in our public lands. I secured continued funding for public safety and to tackle the ongoing crisis of missing, murdered, and trafficked indigenous women and girls. And, to create a healthier, safer Alaska, we provide crucial resources to help prevent suicide, substance misuse, and alcohol abuse. As we rebuild and strengthen our economy, the programmatic and congressionally directed funding I’ve secured in this measure will provide greater certainty, hope, and support for Alaskans as we work together to realize our state’s unrivaled promise.” 

This is where your tax dollars are going: toward sending millions to Alaska for things that the state should obviously be handling, not the feds. Why should your tax dollars be used to fund a random wastewater plant in Alaska? Because someone wanted to buy Murkowski’s vote, apparently.

By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.