No payback for Alaska despite votes against Obama's gun bill

Tuesday, April 23, 2013  

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) voted against expanded background checks for gun sales but President Barack Obama won't be retaliating against them, The New York Times reports.

Opposition from Democrats like Begich and Republicans like Murkowski, who is known to compromise with the administration, spelled defeat for a key reform advanced by Obama in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. But the president will be keeping his promise to send Sally Jewell, the new Secretary of the Interior Department, to Alaska to the Native village of King Cove, where residents are seeking to build a road through a national wildlife refuge.

The trip will occur even as sequestration has prevented Assistant Secretary Kevin Washburn, the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, from traveling to tribal and Indian conferences in the Lower 48. Under the deal with Murkowski and Begich, Washburn will conduct a consultation in Alaska even though the BIA isn't the lead agency on the road.

Get the Story:
In Gun Bill Defeat, a President Who Hesitates to Twist Arms (The New York Times 4/23)

BIA takes role on controversial road for Alaska Native village (03/22)