Above Graphic: h/t CrooksAndLiars.com.
The Associated Press reports, Sinema’s shift: ‘Prada socialist’ to corporate donor magnet:
Twenty years ago, a Green Party activist running for the Phoenix City Council named Kyrsten Sinema likened raising campaign cash to “bribery.”
Now a first-term senator from Arizona, she no longer has such qualms.
Once a self-styled “Prada socialist” labeled as “too extreme” by Arizona’s Democratic Party, Sinema has found new power as a centrist in a 50-50 Senate where there are no votes to spare, forcing President Joe Biden to downsize his agenda and other Democratic ambitions.
Her outsize authority highlights one senator’s ability to exploit her party’s narrow hold on the chamber and bend the will of the majority. That prowess is also a reason that corporate interests eager to influence Democrats’ now-$1.85 trillion package of social and climate initiatives have rushed to provide her financial support.
Throughout months of exhaustive negotiations, Sinema has offered only limited explanation for opposing policies Democrats have campaigned on for years, angering many of her colleagues.
But her actions also have won her new allies, making Sinema a magnet for campaign donations from powerful interests with millions at stake in how the legislation turns out.
Sinema notably opposed two parts of Biden’s initial proposal that have broad public support: an increase in the tax rates for corporations and wealthy individuals, and an expansive plan that would have substantially reduced the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare recipients.
The concessions she helped win align with the interests of many of her donors who have made Sinema the Senate’s No. 3 recipient of money — nearly $500,000 — this year from the pharmaceutical and financial services sectors, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.
Sinema’s office declined to make her available for an interview.
[Her] embrace of influential donors she once rejected perplexes many in her party.
“It creates the perception of a conflict of interest and perception of industry groups having influence,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who was co-chair of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. “How does she explain the role of all of these contributions?”
A former social worker who served on Ralph Nader’s 2000 Green Party presidential campaign, Sinema didn’t seek office as a Democrat until after two unsuccessful Arizona bids as a progressive or independent.
After winning a seats in the Arizona House in 2004, her political persona began to shift. Gradually retooling herself as a moderate, Sinema rose through the Legislature’s Democratic minority while positioning herself for higher office as the state transitioned from a Republican stronghold to an electoral battleground.
Since her 2012 election to the U.S. House, the candidate who once railed against capitalism’s “Almighty Dollar” has welcomed the contributions of industry groups and corporate political action committees. She’s raised at least $3 million from CEOs, businesses executives, investors, lobbyists and finance sector workers, campaign finance records show.
Sinema’s swelling campaign account comes as many in her party have refused such contributions, denouncing them as evidence of deep-seated corruption in Washington.
While Sinema is hardly alone in raising money from special interests during a major legislative battle, what is notable is the scope of Sinema’s fundraising windfall between April and September. Her objections to Biden’s legislation then gave her massive sway over the future of his bill. The roughly $3 million she collected during that period is the best cash haul of her career outside the 2018 election, when she was first on the ballot for U.S. Senate.
But there were signs of her gravitating to business interests earlier.
Last year, she helped initiate a bipartisan caucus to raise “awareness of the benefits of personalized medicine,” a pricey form of precision treatments for diseases that are hard to cure. Her current opposition to tax increases on corporate and high-earners comes after she voted in 2017 against President Donald Trump’s tax cut legislation, which lowered the corporate rate to its current 21 percent while also giving a rebate to high earners.
Among the donors:
—Executives and a PAC for the drugmaker Amgen have given at least $21,500 in 2021, making Sinema second only to House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California in receiving contributions from the company this year. Almost all of the Amgen donations were clustered in late June, when Democrats were pushing legislation that would have curtailed pharmaceutical company earnings by allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. Sinema’s opposition was instrumental in leading lawmakers to pursue a scaled-back version that is now advancing in the House. The new plan would allow Medicare to negotiate the price of about 100 drugs within a few years, while limiting monthly insulin copayments to $35 for many.
Company CEO Robert Bradway gave Sinema $5,000; two company lobbyists gave an additional $3,000.
When Sinema ran for Senate in 2018 she promised to lower prescription drug costs.
We need to make health care more affordable, lower prescription drug prices, and fix the problems in the system – not go back to letting insurance companies call all the shots. #AZSen pic.twitter.com/rlGiOGyeBf
— Kyrsten Sinema (@kyrstensinema) March 9, 2018
—Sinema has taken in at least $27,000 this year from major drugmakers including Takeda, GlaxoSmithKline, Genentech and Eli Lilly. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the preeminent trade organization representing drugmakers, has been a major source of funding for a group that is running ads praising Sinema as “independent and effective for Arizona,” records show.
—Twelve executives for the investment bank Goldman Sachs have donated $37,000 to Sinema since May. That includes Goldman President John Waldron, who gave a maximum $5,800 donation in August. Sinema’s office said that while she doesn’t support raising corporate taxes, she does support establishing a corporate minimum tax so that businesses can’t altogether avoid paying their fair share, which is now included in Biden’s plan.
—Executives, managers and a corporate PAC for Ryan LLC, a global tax consulting firm, poured over $72,000 into Sinema’s campaign account in late August and September. That made Ryan, whose employees and PAC had not previously given to Sinema, one of her top corporate donors. The Texas-based company advertises itself as “liberating our clients from the burden of being overtaxed.” In August, USA Today reported that the company officials are ensnared in an FBI inquiry over whether they pressured the administration of Gov. Doug Ducey, R-Ariz., to issue millions of dollars in tax refunds to a Ryan client.
Checks have also come in from Jimmy Haslam III, a longtime Republican donor and owner of the Cleveland Browns, and his wife, Susan, who gave $8,700 to Sinema in June and September; Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, twins who run a private equity firm and are perhaps best known for successfully suing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who each gave $5,800 apiece in July; and Stanley Hubbard, a billionaire Minnesota TV and radio station mogul who has given millions of dollars to GOP causes, who donated $2,900 in September.
Sinema has drawn the ire of her colleagues in Congress, who say she blocked proposals that almost all Democratic lawmakers [sans Manchin] support.
“It would be a tragedy for us to not fix the unjust corporate tax system so that corporations and individuals pay their fair share,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who played an major role in negotiating the bill.
Sanders focused on Sinema’s support for the priorities of the pharmaceutical industry.
“It is beyond comprehension that there’s any member of the United States Congress who is not prepared to vote to make sure that we lower prescription drug costs,” he said last month. He added that he hoped Sinema “does what the people in Arizona want.”
Some longtime Democratic Party financiers have also grown frustrated with her.
“With all the tension in the party, people have long memories,” said Michael Smith, a donor from Los Angeles, whose partner, James Costos, served as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Spain.
Sinema made unspecified objections to the topline cost of the Democratic reconciliation bill, but then opposed the “pay fors” – higher taxes on the wealthy – that fully paid for the long-overdue investments in the reconciliation bill. So it is fair to say her concerns were more about protecting her newfound corporate plutocrat friends from having to pay higher taxes than any program in the reconciliation bill.
Jonathan Chait adds, Sinema: Households Earning $9 Million a Year Are Too Poor to Pay More Tax: Finally, a senator looking out for the high-seven-figure-income class.
Joe Biden campaigned on a package of well-crafted reforms to restore fairness to the tax code, only to watch his handiwork eaten alive by a handful of centrist Democrats who are hypersensitive to any change that would even slightly inconvenience the rich. Perhaps the most tragicomic encapsulation of this process is contained in a line in today’s Washington Post: “To meet the demands of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), the White House agreed to drop a proposed 3 percent tax on taxpayers earning over $5 million, instead agreeing to target the higher tax to those earning more than $10 million.”
Just how did we arrive at such an absurd point? A short history is in order.
After Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts blew up the budget deficit in the 1980s, Democrats tried running on tax increases, only to realize people didn’t want to hear this. Bill Clinton solved the problem by promising to raise taxes only on the rich, which he defined as households earning $200,000 or more.
That became the standard Democratic line for many years. Obama also campaigned on it. However, when he negotiated the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, Republicans were able to push the threshold up to $400,000 a year — nobody below that level would pay any higher taxes.
Even though the $400,000-a-year line was arrived at through contentious negotiations with Republicans, Democrats eventually embraced it as their new line. Biden campaigned on a promise that nobody earning below $400,000 a year would pay a dime in higher taxes. Since earning $400,000 a year would put you in the top one percent of the income distribution, this put Biden on presumably safe political ground, as he could promise 99 percent of the taxpayers his plan would not touch them at all.
However, “centrist” Democrats have balked at these proposals, and none has been more difficult to placate than Sinema. The Arizona senator blew up even the watered-down version of Biden’s plan that had managed to survive intense lobbying. It was a concession to Sinema that the White House scrapped its plans and replaced them with an income surtax on the ultrarich.
And now, Sinema reportedly told the administration that raising taxes — by a mere 3 percentage points! — on households earning more than $5 million is too onerous. Sinema would only accept a tax on the real rich people who earn $10 million a year or more, not the working schlubs pulling down a mere $8 or $9 million a year.
I am not aware of any economic principle that would recommend this change as a more efficient method of taxing the rich. I asked Kyle Pomerleau, a tax expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, if he knew of any incentive or economic-growth case for Sinema’s position. “If anything, the incentive/growth case goes the other way. Generally, you want a lower rate on a broader base of income,” he told me. “Instead they went with a higher rate on a narrower base.”
So not even the right sees a trickle-down incentive effect. Sinema’s stance is motivated by pure compassion. The poor folks scraping by on a high-seven-figure income have to be spared. And, to be sure, every dollar in higher taxes on the rich forfeited means one less dollar in social support for janitors and bus drivers. When Sinema talks about Democrats winning back the working class, this is apparently what she has in mind.
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“I just don’t understand why you are letting the Republicans off the hook.”
Bill, I don’t think they are being let off the hook. But tell me, in the current cast of these GOP Senators, who do you propose the Democrats try to convince to support Biden’s agenda or any part of it?
The GOP isn’t even pretending to be interested in governance. They just want to be in charge again and right now they are committed to obstructing the Democrats. So they’re railing about inflation, border problems, Afghanistan, supply chain problems, etc…hoping that they can convince people the Democrats are failing. They really have no interest in expanding the social safety net or doing anything “progressive.”
I think it’s worth noting that Sinema and Manchin are affiliated with the Democratic party and presumably share those values. Most of Biden’s agenda could probably be legislated in two years if these two traitors were not obstructing it.
I think it’s also worth noting that the Sinema we’re dealing with now is not the Sinema we voted for in 2018, and that Sinema wasn’t so great either. But her bait and switch is a betrayal of major significance and the “Prada Socialist” needs to find another line of work.
John, the “majority” is the voters. The Democrats won in 2020, the voters liked their proposed policies, and those policies continue to poll favorably with voters.
I would say that a Democratic Senator or Representative should be voting with Democrats on these policies.
Here’s your math:
81,284,666 – Biden
74,224,319 – Trump
Liza, Meanie, and some others:
I just don’t understand why you are letting the Republicans off the hook. Any two of the fifty R’s could enable the passage of the BBB agenda. Yes, Sinema and Manchin are being obstructionist, and for me entirely unreasonable, but the R’s have at least as much responsibility.
Didn’t I just say this?
If all of the Republicans, and Republican-lite folks like Manchin and Sinema, oppose something that benefits real people, one should follow the money.
This is where the state’s $1 billion tax cut came from. Feds are trying to claw back that money.
Liza—- When you say, “…. it remains to be seen ….” I will take that as agreement with my main point (It’s way too early.). I disagree that, “… they (Manchin and Sinema) are in control…”. They share control with al least 50 other Senators.
Bill, Manchin & Sinema are in control since they are the ones who have been preventing the BBB from being passed in the Senate. They are in control as they are going against the will of 48 of their fellow Democratic Senators, their constituents and the general nationwide electorate. Manchin has been negotiating with his fellow Democrats in bad faith as he persists in moving the goalposts every time an agreement is near. Sinema? Who knows what she wants as she’s pretty tight lipped. Both are putting their large donors above their constituents. If we had two more democratically progressive Senators in the mix, the power these two miscreants are wielding would disappear in a flash.
Bill, it “remains to be seen” how badly Sinema and Manchin gut the House version of BBB or if they even allow it to be legislated. They are in control because out of the 50 Democratic senators, they are the only ones who are willing to be traitors.
That’s just the way it is. They are corrupt politicians who apparently have no fear of the voters, at least not now. And in Sinema’s case, there is clearly a bait and switch from her 2018 Senate campaign (as well as previous campaigns) to her current positions.
I can’t explain Sinema, but what I see are the destructive consequences of her re-ordering her priorities where tens of millions in her campaign fund are more important than a more just society or democracy itself.
The Democrats have been hacking away at BBB for months in an effort to come up with some trimmed down version that the traitors (S&M) will vote for. And I keep wondering, who in the blazing hell do those two people think they are?
If you think Sinema deserves more time, I’m afraid you are going to be very disappointed. Leopards don’t change their spots. Sinema has been re-inventing herself throughout her political career, but when she got close to the big money she came out and showed us who she is.
The only thing that has been consistently true about Sinema is her lack of style and poor fashion choices. Prada, my ass.
I would point out that any one Democratic senator could hold the party hostage, but only two prima donna divas, Manchin and Sinema, have chosen to do so. They have disregarded their constituents to serve their own ends.
Isn’t it way too early to be judging Senator Sinema? So far she has voted with Joe Biden’s agenda essentially 100% of the time. I’ll concede she hasn’t publicly gotten on board with Build Back Better but then there hasn’t been a vote yet.
As for “corporate money”—- There is always the dilemma of which came first. Did the money buy a vote or did the money chase after an already established position? Furthermore, what is a “special interest”? It seems inconsistent to say Exxon is a special interest but the Sierra Club is not.
I’d also point out that there are 100 Senators who hold the possibility of vetoing their party’s position. It isn’t just two Senators who are holding up BBB, there are 52, any two could do the job of passing the act.
You are ignoring the massive body of reporting this year and statements made by other Democratic senators that it is indeed Sinema and Manchin who are holding up Biden’s agenda (Build Back Better, Voting Rights, Paid Leave, Minimum Wage, etc.) in the Democratic caucus. Sinema killed the minimum wage bill with her thumbs down curtsey.
These bills have been substantially modified from the original bills in order to appease the demands from either or both Sinema and Manchin. This is indisputable. Their demands reflect the position of their corporate campaign donors, as the AP documents in its reporting above. And let’s not forget that their unprincipled support for the Senate filibuster rule is how they hold the Biden agenda hostage to their demands, and effectively empower the insurrectionist Republicans.
I would agree that the 50 Republican senators who have abandoned responsible governing for a policy of total obstruction are far worse. Any two of the so-called “moderate” Republicans could render Sinema and Manchin irrelevant and break this hostage situation with the Biden agenda.
If all 50 Republican senators and Sinema and Manchin oppose these bills, then how is Sinema bending the will of the majority? Seems like she is part of the majority. You need to stop believing that all Dems must march in lockstep.
The Sedition Party does not oppose these bills on policy grounds. They could care less about policy. The GQP is a post-policy party that long ago abandoned responsible governing. Their only motivation in life is obtaining and controlling power (abusing power for nefarious ends). They are seditious obstructionists who do not care what the vast majority of Americans want. A newly released Monmouth University poll found, https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_111021/:
“The president’s large spending plans remain broadly popular. Support for the Bipartisan Infrastructure deal (BIF), which passed Congress last week and awaits the president’s signature, stands at 65%, down just a few points from prior polls. Support for the still-pending Build Back Better (BBB) plan to expand access to health care, college, paid leave and other services remains steady at 62%. Furthermore, 60% of Americans support the climate change funding part of the BBB bill.”
GQP members of Congress do not reflect the views of a majority of Americans, or even their own constituents. They serve only one master, autocrat Donald Trump.
Right now they nothing but a propaganda machine of internet trolls like you and Paul Gosar, and Marjorie “Q” Greene, and Ted Cruz, etc.
Oh thank goodness! We were worried about you John Kavanagh.
After you said the BLM protests last year caused “billions of dollars” of damage in another post, you were supposed to show your work, to back up your statements, but instead I guess you just ran away.
We thought something must have happened to you, because we know you’d never just coward out after you were exposed as a source of misinformation and lies.
No one takes you seriously, but it’s important to point out when people like you are spreading lies and misinformation.
Intellectually dishonest, and cowardly.
“You need to stop believing that all Dems must march in lockstep.”
Interesting that you say this, John, since you are affiliated with a political party/cult that demands that it’s members march in lockstep. Those who do not march in lockstep face the party’s wrath and punishment (ex: Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Rep. Liz Cheney).
How would you reconcile this contradiction, John?
Actually, there are times to march in lockstep and times when there is a need for discussion and compromise. But in these times, when the GOP is committed to obstruction and the Senate has a 50-50 split, the Democrats need to respond to “the fierce urgency of now” and march in lockstep.
Trying to find consistency or any semblance of logic in Kavanagh’s comments will just end in disappointment.
I only reply to Troll Boy because I don’t like to see bad faith arguments and outright lies go unchallenged.
He’s like the Dunning-Kruger effect and the movie Dumb and Dumber had a baby that’s collected government checks its whole life while bitching about the government.
He’s also quite the masochist, showing his racist belly here so often.
Just do the math. 48 out of 100 is not a majority.
We all know that Democrats in the Senate represent 40 million more voters than the GOP members. The Senate is horribly mal-aportioned and anti-democratic. We should abolish it, IMO. We could at least begin to ameliorate that imbalance by adding DC and PR representation.
Liza, it’s a syndrome they willingly suffer from: “It’s what we do so the opposition must be doing it too!
Don’t expect the “Good State Representative” to back up his assertions. It’s classic behavior we’ve learned to expect from this arrogantly condescending yellow-belly.
@RepKavanagh – You do the math – if there were 48 GOPers out of 100 members of the Senate, Manchin and Sinema wouldn’t have the power that they have. Which is why they are doing their level best to derail things now.
Because however 2022 turns out, things will change in the Senate, and Manchin and Sinema will lose practical power.
“”As for “corporate money”—- There is always the dilemma of which came first. Did the money buy a vote or did the money chase after an already established position?””
Which came first? The Big Pharma donations (bribes) or Sinema’s sudden and seemingly non-sensical opposition to allowing Medicare to negotiate all prescription drug prices? Which came first? Her sudden opposition to raising taxes to pay for BBB or the donations (bribes) from corporate donors? And what triggers those “pro- Sinema” TV ads? Do you think they come from kindhearted PACs who get nothing in return?
Wake up, Bill. Sinema is a sell-out.
Biden is trying to deliver the policies that the Democrats ran on and won in 2020 and he’s trying to do it in two years with razor thin margins in the Senate and House.
What kind of Democratic legislator would obstruct this agenda (the will of the voters) and hold the line for the GOP? You tell me.
My guess is that Democratic traitors Sinema and Manchin are more empowered than ever because Biden believed he needed a quick win and separated the BIF from BBB. The House will pass BBB, and it remains to be seen what happens in the Senate. Sinema and Manchin can do whatever they want, they are in control now, the (real) Democrats have no leverage.