Murkowski talks shop at Palmer Chamber

PALMER — U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski turns out to be something of a partisan.

A culinary partisan,

that is.

Asked about her favorite fair food at a stop off at the Palmer Chamber of Commerce monthly lunch, she admitted Wednesday a fondness for gyros, swirl ice cream and, if there’s still room, Taco Dan’s.

“He is just fabulous,” she said, of Taco Dan.

The senior Alaska senator was in town to sample the ambiance and touch base with voters at a series of listening sessions during Congress’s August recess.

Her next date with voters at the polls won’t be until November 2016, which took some of the electoral edge off.

The question about fair food came near the end of the session. It was hardly the most substantial issue Murkowski addressed.

Part of her listening sessions involved a briefing by representatives from the Matanuska Electrical Association. Murkowski took it as an opportunity to knock government regulation, as it relates to the energy business.

“You’re trying to invest in a major energy generation facility and you face the uncertainty that is out there with EPA regulations that are either underway in draft form or maybe coming down the pipe,” she said. “You don’t know how those are going to play out. It’s tough. It’s tough on everyone.”

National media reports of congressional gridlock are not exaggerated, Murkowski said.

“What you read is true,” she said. “We are at a point, quite honestly — in the 12 years I’ve been back there in Washington, D.C. — where I’ve never seen the two sides dug in as deep as they are. Obviously, much of that has to do with the fact that we’ve got elections coming up.”

But that’s no excuse, Murkowski told chamber members.

“The fact of the matter is we have elections every two years,” she said. “If we use that as an excuse not to govern, we’re never going to get anything done in this country. The push to make sure that we get ourselves through this gridlock, that we start that level of communication that allows us to break through that, is critical.”

Federal legislators have still accomplished some things and will accomplish more after the recess ends in December, Murkowski said. The Water Resources Development Act continuation and the Workforce Investment Opportunity Act continuance are two examples of accomplishments she identified.

She listed the continuing budget resolution, a defense reauthorization bill, and extending tax cuts as three things that must be passed.

The general theme was treading water, Murkowski said.

“Really, in terms of those substantive policy measures, if you’re holding your breath for something that you haven’t seen come forward to this point in time, you can start breathing again, because it’s probably not going to happen,” she said.

Once the elections have passed, more substantive legislation could move forward in the “lame-duck” period before the 114th Congress takes office in January 2015, Murkowski said.

Like many of her Republican colleagues, Murkowski said she is hopeful elections will result in a change in leadership in the Senate. The GOP needs six additional seats to take over.

Republican leadership, she said, would result in a more effective legislature, even in light of the 2013 government shut down, and the 21-hour attempt by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to filibuster the stopgap measure that ended it, Murkowski said.

“There are people — like (U.S. Sen.) Bernie Sanders (an independent from Vermont) — who are bomb-throwers,” she said. “I think Cruz’s decision to use the filibuster reflected poorly on us and our professionalism as representatives.”

Nevertheless, she blamed U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) for a procedural stranglehold on the Senate.

“We can’t even get our amendments considered,” she said.

The U.S. House of Representatives, despite being widely ridiculed for its divisiveness, has considered hundreds of amendments, whereas the Senate has considered fewer than 20, Murkowski said.

State legislative maneuvering on the Knik Arm bridge has put the onus on the Federal government to pony up, though that contribution is politically unpopular, Murkowski said.

“This has been branded the ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’” she said. “You might say ‘Well, that was the Ketchikan bridge.’ But in the eyes of John Q. Public in Iowa or wherever it is in the Lower 48, every bridge in Alaska is apparently a bridge to nowhere.”

“That is a political black eye,” Murkowski added.

The inability of the Mat-Su Borough and the Municipality of Anchorage to make ferry travel feasible disappointed Murkowski, she said. The vessel, for which the borough now owes $12.3 million to the Federal Transportation Administration, was intended as a stopgap measure, she said. The Ketchikan-built ferry was obtained from the Department of Defense with help from former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.

Construction delays associated with the bridge required something in the meantime, Murkowski said.

“I think it was right at the time,” she said.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com.