‘Silent Sinema’ Is Doing The Bidding of Corporate Lobbyists And Wealthy Plutocrat Campaign Donors

Immediately after Senator Kyrsten Sinema voted in favor of advancing the $3.5 trillion Democratic Budget Reconciliation  Plan aka the American Families Plan, she signaled that she intended to sabotage the Democratic plan she just voted to advance by saying “I do not support a bill that costs $3.5 trillion.”

(Obvious Man asks: “Then why did you vote for it? Duh!)

The political media has been speculating for weeks now to which family assistance spending programs “Silent Sinema” is objecting. She will not say (“Talk to the hand with my ‘fuck off’ ring.”)

Turns out it’s not the spending side she objects to, it’s the “pay for” side – higher taxes on corporations and wealthy Plutocrats – to which she objects. She wants to protect her corporate and wealthy Plutocrat campaign donors from having to pay their fair share in taxes, so that average Americans can get some financial relief from 40 years of failed Republican “trickle down” economics that shut them out of sharing in the American dream.

The Wall Street Journal  reported that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema “has told lobbyists that she is opposed to any increase” in taxes on high-income individuals, businesses, or capital gains. Her opposition is reportedly “pushing Democrats to more seriously plan for a bill that doesn’t include those major revenue increases.”

The “Prada Socialist” is now a “Prada Plutocrat” hellbent on preserving income and wealth disparities, and the unfairness of the American tax system which allows corporations and wealthy Plutocrats (who employ the lobbyists to whom “Silent Sinema” will speak) to get away with not paying their fair share in taxes.

As Steve Benen reported earlier this year, The wealthy’s ‘egregious’ tax evasion costs the U.S. a bundle:

There were multiple reports in the spring documenting the fact that dozens of the nation’s largest corporations didn’t pay any federal income taxes on more than $40 billion in profits last year. As we discussed at the time, many of these private sector giants actually received federal rebates, creating negative tax rates, thanks in part to the country’s regressive tax policies.

But as discouraging as it was to learn that many middle-class American families paid more in federal income taxes than companies such as FedEx and Nike, the revelations didn’t point to any legal wrongdoing. Corporate giants simply took advantage of the existing system.

It’s a different story when some of the wealthiest Americans fail to pay what they owe. The New York Times reported yesterday:

The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans are the nation’s most egregious tax evaders, failing to pay as much as $163 billion in owed taxes per year, according to a Treasury Department report released on Wednesday. … Tax compliance rates are high for low- and middle-income workers who have their taxes deducted automatically from their paychecks. The rich, however, are able to use accounting loopholes to shield their tax liabilities.

To put the figure in context, President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better proposal, currently pending on Capitol Hill, calls for roughly $350 billion in new investments, per year, over the course of the next decade. According to the Treasury Department’s findings, if the wealthiest of the wealthy paid their tax bills, it would cover nearly half of the cost of the legislation.

The other half would come from higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, reversing some of the Trump/GOP egregious tax bill from 2017 that ran up the federal deficit. “Silent Sinema” is opposed to this. Does she prefer deficit spending like the GQP instead?

Common sense seems to point to an obvious solution: Congress could bolster the Internal Revenue Service, strengthen enforcement of existing tax laws, ensure rich Americans pay their tax bills, and use the revenue to benefit the public.

That, however, is a scenario congressional Republicans have rejected out of hand.

Circling back to our earlier coverage, it’s no secret that the IRS has been gradually undermined for years, which in turn has made it far more difficult for the agency to be aggressive in pursuing tax cheats, which in turn has meant less revenue for policy priorities. Investing more in the service would make it possible to generate revenue without raising tax rates on anyone.

As The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell explained in a recent column, “How do you raise tax revenue without raising taxes? By increasing enforcement of existing tax law and making sure every penny already owed gets paid.”

With this in mind, as the Treasury Department points to a brutal new figure — the wealthy’s tax evasion costs us $163 billion a year — the difference in the reactions between the parties is extraordinary. For Democrats, the solution is to enforce the tax laws already on the books.

For Republicans, the solution is to do nothing and allow the problem to continue. The GOP, in effect, still supports underfunding the tax police.

Earlier this month, the Washington Post published a multi-part investigative report into the Pandora Papers investigation revealing the flows of money, property and other assets of the wealthy concealed in the offshore financial system. Key findings from the Pandora Papers investigation: “Financial experts said billionaires in the United States tend to pay such low tax rates that they have less incentive to seek offshore havens.”

UPDATE: The Washington Post editorializes today, Democrats want to crack down on tax cheats. Republicans balk. (excerpt)

Republicans and bank lobbyists have instead attacked a key piece of Democrats’ plans to enable the IRS to cut the “tax gap” — that is, the difference between what the government is owed and what it collects. If they defeat the plan, the winners would be lawbreakers who benefit from the government services for which everyone else pays their share.

Senior Democrats want to better track the flow of money, enabling IRS officials to compare how much income people say they made against how much money went into their bank accounts in a given year. Large discrepancies might indicate tax evasion. At the least, anomalous-seeming numbers would warrant an extra look. This sort of information might not lead to more audits, but it would result in better-targeted ones.

The Democrats’ plan originally called for requiring reports on accounts into which or out of which $600 flowed in a given year. Critics [hysterically] charged that Democrats sought to spy on everyday Americans’ small-time transactions. So the Democrats announced Tuesday that the new reporting requirements would apply only to accounts that see $10,000 of inflows or outflows in a given year, and they excluded wage income from the calculation. These amendments underscore that the plan is not meant to target ordinary workers.

In fact, the IRS already collects detailed information on wage earners’ paychecks [W-2 forms], while Americans who rely on other types of income — such as many wealthy Americans — have far less information about their cash flow routinely reported. The new requirements would put all types of income on a more equal footing in terms of the government’s ability to track it, shedding more light on opaque sources of income among those who do not earn paychecks.

Republicans [falsely] accuse Democrats of a Marxist plot to track the minute details of Americans’ financial lives. In fact, the proposal would not require reporting of individual transactions — just totals in and out at the end of the year. Banks complain that reporting requirements might be burdensome to financial institutions and taxpayers. Actually, banks already must file a report on any account that earns more than $10 in interest in a year; adding a couple of lines for aggregate inflow and outflow numbers is hardly outrageous. As for taxpayers, the only ones who have anything to fear are those who cheat. The same can be said of businesses that work off the books.

Bank lobbyists argue that enhanced IRS funding alone would enable the government to reduce the tax gap. Certainly, more funding would help. But without better information on who might be cheating, a lot of that money will be wasted. Democrats should press on — and Republicans should drop the demagoguery.

Just to be clear, Senator Kyrsten Sinema is protecting corporate and wealthy Plutocrat deadbeats, tax cheats, who evade paying their fair share in taxes to the detriment of average American taxpayers. This is whom her actual “constituents” are, corporate lobbyists and wealthy Plutocrats who have bought her vote with campaign contributions to maintain this egregiously unfair tax system. This is what political corruption looks like.

It is American families who desperately need childcare assistance, college education assistance, caregiver assistance, etc. included in the American Families Plan to whom Sen. Kytsten Sinema gives the back of her hand with her “fuck off” ring. It tells you everything you need to know about her lack of moral character.

Rather than citing her ring back to her and telling her to “fuck off,” Democratic leaders are acceding to her bad faith sabotage of the American Families Plan. (This is cowardly and unacceptable). Democrats Back Away From Raising Tax Rates to Pay for Agenda:

The Biden administration and congressional Democrats are moving toward dropping their push to raise corporate and individual income tax rates to pay for their sprawling domestic policy bill, instead drafting a plan that includes new ways to tax the wealthy and multinational corporations, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The conversations have been driven in large part by the concerns of a crucial centrist senator, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who has been resisting any increase in either rate for more than a month.

Is she nouveau riche, and wants to shield her newly acquired wealth?

While White House officials and leading Democrats had hoped to persuade Ms. Sinema to change her stance, their focus on different proposals for financing the package, which is expected to cost about $2 trillion, reflects a recognition that they need a backup plan if they want to secure the votes needed in the Senate to pass President Biden’s marquee legislative priority.

Officials have made no final decisions on the plan — which is expected to include education, child care, paid leave, anti-poverty and climate change programs — and negotiations are continuing, according to multiple people briefed on the effort.

Mr. Biden had proposed paying for those programs by raising the top individual income tax rate to 39.6 percent from 37 percent and the corporate rate to 28 percent from 21 percent. Administration officials have said privately in recent weeks that they believed Ms. Sinema would eventually support some level of increase in those rates. Ms. Sinema’s office declined to comment on continuing negotiations.

“The little people don’t need to know my position. You have to pay me for that kind of access!”

The plan the White House and leading congressional Democrats are discussing is built around a range of other revenue raisers to which Ms. Sinema appears to be open. They include increased I.R.S. efforts to collect taxes owed by corporations and high earners (see above), and increased taxes on the income that multinational companies operating in the United States earn overseas, which many Democrats calculate could raise at least $1 trillion over a decade, combined.

Democrats are also exploring a tax on billionaires’ wealth and on corporate stock buybacks, which Senate Democrats have championed, along with a new minimum tax on corporations. Party leaders are also expected to count some potential revenue gains from increased economic activity generated by the bill, mirroring the “dynamic scoring” that Republicans claimed in 2017 as an offset for the tax cuts President Donald J. Trump signed into law [and did not happen.]

Top Democrats also remain hopeful that some spending can be offset by an effort to reduce the costs the federal government pays for prescription drugs for older adults.

But wait, “Silent Sinema” aka “Pharma Girl” is also opposed to that idea. A 30-Year Campaign to Control Drug Prices Faces Yet Another Failure:

Senior Democrats insist that they have not given up the push to grant Medicare broad powers to negotiate lower drug prices as part of a once-ambitious climate change and social safety net bill that is slowly shrinking in scope. They know that the loss of the provision, promoted by President Biden on the campaign trail and in the White House, could be a particularly embarrassing defeat for the package, since it has been central to Democratic congressional campaigns for nearly three decades.

“Senate Democrats understand that after all the pledges, you’ve got to deliver,” said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the chairman of the Finance Committee.

“It’s not dead,” declared Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

But with at least three House Democrats opposing the toughest version of the measure, and at least one Senate Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, against it, government negotiating power appears almost certain to be curtailed, if not jettisoned.

Before @kyrstensinema threatened to blow up Dems' Medicare drug negotiation bill, she demanded that everyone have "access to the lowest-cost prescriptions."

Watch this ridiculous ad from Sinema's 2018 Democratic primary campaign. https://t.co/6Z3grL9Efj pic.twitter.com/PkAPjHnlBV

— The Lever (@LeverNews) September 29, 2021

[A]nd after so many campaign-trail promises, Democrats could be left next year with a lot of explaining to do.

“Silent Sinema” already has some splainin’ to do. Newsweek reports, Sinema Targeted in New Ad by Arizona Veterans to ‘Keep Her Word’ on Prescription Drugs:

Senator Kyrsten Sinema is being targeted in a new ad campaign featuring Arizona veterans.

Former military members are calling on the Democrat to deliver on lowering prescription drug costs by supporting President Joe Biden’s economic agenda.

The ad notes that Sinema promised to lower drug costs during her 2018 run for the Senate but has also received “more than $750,000 in donations from Big Pharma and the medical device industry.”

“As veterans, we’re asking Kyrsten Sinema to keep her word. Stop working for drug companies and start working for us and all Arizonans,” the ad states. “Vote for the Build Back Better Act.”

The ad is part of a seven-figure campaign by Common Defense, a national grassroots organization of progressive veterans. Common Defense told Newsweek the video is running in Arizona, mainly in Phoenix and Tucson, starting this week.

Marine Corps veteran Joanna Sweatt, an Arizona resident and the group’s lead organizer, said Sinema has “positioned herself as a maverick in the mold” of the late GOP Senator John McCain.

“If she wants to live up to that legacy, she needs to buck her corporate donors and do what’s right for Arizonans and keep the promises she made to veterans,” Sweatt said.

Newsweek reached out to Sinema’s office for comment on the ad but didn’t receive a response before publication.

[A] recent poll found that an overwhelming majority of Americans (88 percent) support federal funding for lowering prescription drug prices. The survey also showed that 84 percent of U.S. adults support expanding Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing costs.

The New York Times adds today, Calling Sinema an Obstacle to Progress, 5 Veterans Quit Her Advisory Council:

Five veterans tapped to advise Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, resigned from their posts on Thursday, publicly accusing her of “hanging your constituents out to dry” in the latest sign of growing hostility toward a centrist who has emerged as a key holdout on President Biden’s agenda.

In a scathing letter obtained by The New York Times, the veterans took Ms. Sinema to task for her refusal to abolish the filibuster and her opposition to parts of Mr. Biden’s multitrillion-dollar social safety net, education, climate and tax plan, stances that have stymied some of his top priorities.

“You have become one of the principal obstacles to progress, answering to big donors rather than your own people,” the veterans wrote in a letter that is to be featured in a new advertisement by Common Defense, a progressive veterans’ activist group that has targeted Ms. Sinema.

“We shouldn’t have to buy representation from you, and your failure to stand by your people and see their urgent needs is alarming,” they added.

The letter is featured in this new ad from the progressive veterans group Common Defense, which will air on TV in Phoenix and Tucson.

The resignations add to a crescendo of anger and pressure that Ms. Sinema is facing from erstwhile allies who say they are perplexed by her recent tactics. She has resisted major elements of Democrats’ sprawling social safety net and climate bill, including raising individual income and corporate tax rates to pay for it. Because Democrats control the Senate with only 50 votes, even one defection could spell defeat for the measure, giving Ms. Sinema outsize influence to determine what can be included.

Ms. Sinema has also steadfastly opposed changing the Senate’s filibuster rule, which effectively requires 60 votes to move forward on any major bill, even as Republicans have used it as a procedural weapon to block voting rights legislation and a bill to avert a federal debt default.

Progressive activists have stepped up their campaign to push Democrats to do away with the rule so they can muscle Mr. Biden’s priorities through Congress on simple majority votes, and they have trained their anger on Ms. Sinema and another centrist holdout, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia.

But while Mr. Manchin hails from a conservative state where he is unlikely to pay a price for breaking with Mr. Biden, Ms. Sinema’s stances have earned her a backlash from onetime supporters in a politically competitive state that is roughly split among Republicans, Democrats and independents.

The veterans who are making a public divorce from her on Thursday have sat on Ms. Sinema’s advisory council since 2019, as part of a group of 20 she selected as her office’s liaison to the Arizona service member community.

“Democrats were out desperately trying to help her win the seat, and now we feel like, what was it for?” Sylvia González Andersh, one of the veterans who signed the letter, said in an interview. “Nobody knows what she is thinking because she doesn’t tell anybody anything. It’s very sad to think that someone who you worked for that hard to get elected is not even willing to listen.”

Ms. Andersh is featured in the advertisement reading aloud the resignation letter, with its harsh assessments of Ms. Sinema. Common Defense, which in recent weeks placed a seven-figure ad buy to pressure Ms. Sinema to support the reconciliation bill, said it would invest another seven figures to aid the new spot.

[C]ommon Defense’s advertisement [is] aiming to erode support for Ms. Sinema among one of her main constituencies.

For years, Ms. Sinema has tried to model herself after Senator John McCain, a Republican combat veteran and former prisoner of war who died in 2018, emphasizing her support for veterans, more than 500,000 of whom live in Arizona. Serving on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, she has shepherded several bipartisan bills that expanded veterans’ access to health care.

Critics have blasted Ms. Sinema’s ties to corporate interests, including the financial and advertising support she has received from groups funded by the pharmaceutical industry and other business interests. As she resists a leading proposal to lower prescription drug prices, Ms. Sinema has received about $400,000 from the pharmaceutical and health industries over the last five years, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit watchdog group.

In the interview, Ms. Andersh singled out Ms. Sinema’s resistance to the drug-cost measure, which would allow Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription medicines, as a betrayal.

“You left us holding the bag, saying you were going to do something about Big Pharma,” Ms. Andersh said.