Sinema’s silence on bill vexes many Democrats
Senate Democrats left their weekly lunch on Tuesday proclaiming that every person in the room — from Vermont's Bernie Sanders to West Virginia's Joe Manchin — was unified on the urgency of getting a deal on President Biden's ambitious domestic policy package.
Conspicuously absent was Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the inscrutable Arizonan whose refusal to discuss publicly her views on Biden's biggest domestic priority has angered many Democrats.
While her colleagues dined, Sinema was elsewhere in the Capitol, huddling with White House officials continuing to negotiate on the tax code, climate initiatives and the social safety net, according to two aides. She had met with Biden earlier that day at the White House, and, unbeknown to many House and Senate Democrats, had been engaging in talks with a small handful of colleagues.
Sinema, who along with fellow holdout Manchin has the power to single-handedly sink Biden's plans in the 50-50 Senate, has been mocked on the left, which has accused her of avoiding the gritty details of legislating in favor of frivolities such as fundraising in Europe and training for races. She has been trailed by angry protesters, some of whom at one point followed her into a public restroom and tried to confront her at the Boston marathon this month.
But Sinema's whereabouts on the day of the Senate lunch were emblematic of her actual approach, according to people directly familiar with it: Eschew all but a select few congressional colleagues, focus on negotiating directly with the president and his senior aides, burrow in on policy details — and ignore the frustration of those not privy to her thinking.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), who held a 30-minute private meeting with Sinema this past week, said the senator effectively ranked her three priorities: a tax credit for renewable energy programs, a child tax credit, and paid leave programs. In their meeting, Neal, the House's chief tax-writer, said Sinema was adamant about getting something done.
“You and I both know this has got to pass,” Neal said as he recounted his conversation with the senator. “She said, 'I couldn't agree more.' ”
Sinema's approach has earned her a reputation within the White House as a deliberative negotiator who administration officials feel has always worked in good faith.
“Sen. Sinema is and always has been clear with us,” one White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the talks candidly. The official added that those who say otherwise “are telling on themselves. They're saying they aren't close enough to the process to know what they're talking about.”
Meanwhile, others not directly involved in the talks, including some in the administration, have grown frustrated, questioning her motives and viewing her as far more opaque and mercurial than Manchin, the other Democrat who has withheld support for the bill.
Sinema is drawing increasing ire from Democrats who say she is the lone holdout on provisions that are popular among Democratic lawmakers and with the public. Though she is not up for reelection until 2024, she is already facing threats of a primary challenge from her left. And a handful of members who served on an informal advisory council for her Senate office quit in recent days, although one has since walked back some of his criticisms.
The big source of dissension between Sinema and virtually every other Democrat on Capitol Hill is her opposition to raising the current 21% corporate tax rate and the individual rate for the highest earners — figures set into law in 2017 under President Donald Trump and the GOP-led Congress.
“The hypocrisy of voting against Trump's tax cuts and then not being willing to restore rates in any way to what they were before the cuts is stunning,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Santa Clara, one of the most vocal intraparty critics of Sinema in Congress. “It makes you wonder, what are the special interests that are driving that decision? It's obviously not conviction, because she voted against the tax cuts in the first place.”
Biden himself, in one of several moments of unusual candor during a CNN town hall on Thursday, said Sinema's opposition to raising a “single penny” through increasing the corporate or individual rates was “where it sort of breaks down.” Sinema's case to both other lawmakers and Biden is that simply raising the rates will not address the question of tax avoidance nor improve competitiveness, a spokesman said, and her office says both Biden and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-New York, have been aware of her views on taxes since early August.
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