Sen. Dan Sullivan warns legislators not to ask questions

Sen. Dan Sullivan is demanding that legislators not ask him more than four questions in total when he speaks to the Legislature Wedneday, one from each caucus.

The first question to candidate Sullivan should be, “Why are you limiting questions this way? No one else representing Alaska in Congress has ever been afraid to answer questions from the Legislature.”

I think the answer is that he is afraid he will be asked questions that he is not comfortable in answering.

Last year several legislators had good questions for Sullivan and he had trouble coming up with good answers.

Sullivan later told reporters in Juneau who asked why he didn’t do town hall sessions, that he didn’t mind questions, calling his appearance before the Legislature the “ultimate town hall.”

“By the way, when you want to talk about a town hall, that was the ultimate town hall. There's 60 elected officials who could ask me any question they wanted on any topic they wanted, and they represent the people,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan claimed a day later on a Fairbanks radio show that he didn’t mind tough questions.

He said he had been through more stressful environments than having elected officials “asking me questions that were clearly drafted from some far left group.”

There was zero evidence that “some far left group” wrote the questions asked by lawmakers. None of the questions were rude or out of place.

House Republicans wrote a letter to Sullivan apologizing for some of the pointed questions other lawmakers had asked, such as whether he would vote to cut Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, and what he was doing to push back on Trump’s cozying up to Putin.

“While we would fully understand if this experience left you hesitant to return, we earnestly hope it will not deter you from gracing us with your presence and wisdom in the future,” they harrumphed.

Sullivan is running for reelection. He’s not hesitant to return. He’s eager to grace the Legislature with his presence and his wisdom.

But he doesn’t want a lot of questions. He doesn’t want a repeat of the “ultimate town hall.”

Sullivan clearly wants to avoid answering any questions about the voter suppression plan from Trump, the abuses of ICE, the attack on NATO, Trump corruption and more.

I wrote this last year following Sullivan’s ridiculous claim about far left groups creating questions he didn’t like:

The questions he faced Thursday reflect widespread worries in Alaska about the Trump administration and Sullivan’s refusal to push back on a wide range of issues.

Questions about the betrayal of Ukraine, the Trump decision to give the world’s richest man control over key parts of government, the attacks on judges, the illegal elimination of jobs and threats to vital services are matters of everyday conversation.

That Sullivan seems to think that legislators aren’t focused on these questions reflects a basic misunderstanding of what is happening in Alaska right now.

Anchorage Sen. Forrest Dunbar prefaced his question to Sullivan with a statement that many Alaskans now believe we are in a constitutional crisis.

“They worry that Congress has abdicated your spending authority, that the Trump administration is now openly defying court orders, and that Elon Musk is illegally firing people, destroying programs mandated by law, delaying contracts and impounding funds that Congress has appropriated. They worry that you have no red line when it comes to Trump or Musk,” he said.

“They worry about a looming nationwide economic downtown caused by the decisions being made in D.C. And most of all they worry about their own families and the benefits that sustain them.”

Dunbar asked Sullivan to say Yes or No to whether he would oppose any cuts to Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security.

“So look I mean the one thing we’re doing to help our country and help our state is this,” said Sullivan, holding up Trump’s executive order to “unleash” Alaska development.

Sullivan’s reply continued:

“And this is really important, OK. Really important. And the last guys (Biden administration) didn’t help us. Let’s just make that one clear. Look, with regard to Medicaid, this is a very important program for Alaska. I’ve been working closely with Sen. Murkowski and Congressman Begich on making sure the leadership in the Congress knows about our unique challenges that we have in Alaska, the high cost of health care, the high cost of living, the cost of living. And some of you might know when we last undertook health care reform in the Congress under budget reconciliation in 2017-2018 there were some things I was able to get in that bill that were very Alaska specific on Medicaid, that were very helpful. So we let our leadership know that we’re unique on a whole host of areas.”

“With regard to Medicaid, I had an amendment that was voted on the floor a couple weeks ago in our budget reconciliation debate about strengthening and improving Medicaid and Medicare, especially for the most vulnerable populations, to keep it for future generations. By the way, that amendment passed. By the way, in terms of politics, little bit of politics, at 2017 the identical amendment passed with over 85 senators voting for it. And that same amendment I couldn’t get one Democrat senator to vote for it. Not sure why, cause a lot of them voted for it just a couple years earlier.”

“So we are working, we are working on all these issues, Sen. Dunbar. And President Trump has also said that we need to strengthen Medicare and Medicaid. But let me make an important point on this that I don’t think gets talked about nearly enough. Almost one-third of Alaskans, 248,000 Alaskans are on the rolls of Medicaid now. OK? We, I think, accept that. Some see it as a good. I don’t see it as a good, OK? I think our goal should be to increase our private sector economy and increase the opportunities for people to move off Medicaid and get private sector insurance from a stronger private sector economy, which is what this is all about.”

He again held up a copy of Trump’s executive order.

“We don’t talk about that enough,” he said.

He never did say if he would oppose any cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

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