Sinema's Tax-Rate Blockade Prods Democrats Left Toward Billionaires' Tax

[BeckyDem]

By Jonathan Weisman
Oct. 22, 2021Updated 4:45 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona and one of her party’s only holdouts on President Biden’s sprawling budget bill, has cultivated a profile in Congress as a business-minded centrist.

But her refusal to raise tax rates on high earners and major corporations to pay for Mr. Biden’s plan is pushing Democrats toward wealth taxation and other measures once embraced only by the party’s left flank.

The frenzied search for new paths around Ms. Sinema’s tax-rate blockade has cheered liberals but raised serious qualms among more moderate Democrats, who now openly say they hope that Ms. Sinema’s business allies will pressure her to relent once they — and she — see the details of the alternatives that she is forcing on her colleagues to pay for around $2 trillion in spending on social programs and anti-climate change initiatives.

“The irony is, with some of these alternatives that are coming out there, it may be the very business community that’s rushing to the barricades, saying, ‘Please, give us rates,’” Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia and a moderate on the Finance Committee, which is charged with drafting the tax plans.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/us/politics/sinema-wealth-taxes.html

[Irish_Dem]

1. If she is too conservative for her business allies, she doesn't sound like much of a centrist.

[BeckyDem]

2. At this point, all I care about is how to get around what she is thwarting.

I don't have the words to describe her. I can't, it's just far too much.

[Irish_Dem]

4. Sounds like some smart minds are trying to get around her drama and obstruction.

Oh I have plenty of words which describe her to a tee, but it would not end well here if I typed them out.

[BeckyDem]

6. Yep. See that, we're on the same page.

[Irish_Dem]

8. Yep. Same page.

[PSPS]

3. "hope that Ms. Sinema's business allies will pressure her to relent"

Translation: "hope that Ms. Sinema’s owners will pressure her to relent"

[PSPS]

5. The political spectrum is so whack. Media says "centrist" for positions far to the right of Nixon.

[BeckyDem]

7. +1. Corp media, always so accurate.