Kyrsten Sinema's Red-Line Is Revealed
and Her Colleagues Are Furious
For months now, Kyrsten Sinema has locked horns with the far-left, refusing to blow up the filibuster and now blocking the passage of Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda via reconciliation. The harassment she’s received has seemingly only bolstered her resolve. More recently, she’s given the White House to the cold shoulder, and perhaps that’s behind this latest leak?
According to sources relayed by Business Insider, Sinema’s red-line has been revealed, and it’s already giving her colleagues fits.
A major holdup in the ongoing talks is Sinema’s opposition to any tax increases for individuals and large corporations, per two Senate Democratic aides familiar with the matter. Her position threatens to deprive the package of over $700 billion in revenue to finance the bulk of Biden’s agenda. The president has repeatedly promised his plan will be fully paid for and won’t add to the deficit. Most Democrats are also fervent in their desire to roll back President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.
Well, that’s quite the red-line.
For a while, we’ve known Sinema had issues with the tax hikes in the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. Now, we know just how big her issues were, and hoo boy. She apparently wants no increases at all, something that cuts to the very core of the Democrat agenda, which is seeking to raise taxes on the “rich” and corporations across the board. If that’s truly her position, I have no idea how a compromise happens down the road. Not only will the far-left never go along with zero tax hikes, but without those increases, the bill’s gimmicks that “pay” for the spending no longer apply.
Leaks like this don’t just happen, and the timing of this one is very deliberate. Sinema just so happens to be in Europe right now, and that trip is already being spun as the Arizona senator bowing to big-money interests and corporations. Dropping this while she’s fundraising overseas is meant to make Sinema look even more out of touch with the Democrat base, and thereby increase the hostility toward her.
The predominant narrative among her opponents? That Sinema is off fundraising in Europe on the dime of big business, while refusing to raise taxes on evil corporations back home. The entire spectacle is enough to make most Democrats tear their hair out, but their attempts to shame Sinema appear to be having no effect.
In short, no matter how much her opponents shout into the great expanse, Sinema is not listening to them, and she’s driving the left of her party absolutely insane. They are used to being able to bully people into submission, and that’s especially true when talking about a fellow Democrat. But Sinema continues to be an enigma, going her own way and feeding off the friendly fire that plagues her. Perhaps a different tact from her detractors may have persuaded her, but the time for that has long passed.
Kyrsten Sinema Gets the Press Knotted up
With Hypocrisy Over Her Europe Trip
Between the facts avoided and the contradictions, the media are looking more foolish over Kyrsten Sinema.
Many are in a furor currently over the latest news about Kyrsten Sinema from The New York Times. The paper details how the Arizona Senator is in the midst of a trip to Europe, engaged in fundraising activities abroad this week. You get all the implication needed just from the implications in the headline: As Budget Bill Hangs in Limbo, Kyrsten Sinema Heads to Europe. Well that is a dastardly and tone deaf move on her part! Doesn’t she know what this means for Joe Biden?!
It is a headline tailor-made for social media outrage, as many details are given to tamp down the ignition of hair in response by many, but likely ignored in the share/retweet age we occupy at the moment. And just to stoke those outrage meters further, here is the Deputy Managing Editor from The Times yanking out this select pull-quote, knowing it would further enrage those already enraged and looking for any excuse for further enragement.
Yes, as the subheading notes, Sinema is not personally the sole reason a beloved spending bill is being held up — the Senate is in a recess session at the moment, so she is free to galavant off to foreign lands where she can use the water closet facilities free of snooping activists with phone cameras to record and axes to grind. Hell, this is reason alone to not be upset at her flashing a passport in defiant fashion.
And as for the fundraising element that is also inducing teeth-gnashing from the activist set, she is attending not personal money hauls, but events for her own party. These are dinners held for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in order to snow shovel donations from American citizens situated abroad. If you are prone to howls of protest take it up with Chuck Schumer and Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, who is headlining the events.
But this positioning is just a continuance of the critiques leveled at Sinema for months now. The press appears to be oblivious to a certain reality in all of their outrage over the bi-partisan-curious Senator from the desert; by suggesting that she is the reason Joe Biden cannot succeed they are delivering unto her far more power than Joe Biden possesses. Odd to see them resent the woman and at the same time elevate to levels not bestowed onto her stature.
This is hardly the lone contradiction we see. Note the primary reason they are exhibiting this anger today — that she will not be available for their hounding and hectoring. Yet as they express contempt that she is seemingly ducking their interrogations on this same day we watched President Biden take the stage once again at his Potemkin Oval Office and then trundle off as he ignored the press. These mooks are more bothered that a rogue Senator will not buckle to them than they are at the President who openly mocks them with the display of his back.
The mere argument they make also exposes another contradiction. This “how dare she travel” commentary from the fainting couches in the newsrooms is in open defiance of the cheerleading we saw this past summer. Texas state House Democrats took their votes and went on a field trip in July, kiting over to D.C. while in session in order to block legislation, and the media could not have been more enthralled.
What we are seeing taking place however is rooted less in facts than it is wishcasting. The press wants desperately to paint Sinema as intemperate and ignoring her job duties, hoping to have her lose stance with her constituents. You hear stories of Arizona Dems wanting to diminish her and work on her removal. What you do not hear is that in her state she is looked at favorably.
Mark Kelly is the other Arizona Senator, and while he is obediently following party orders and voting with Democrats proprietary, it is not earning him raves. A recent in-state poll shows that Sinema has a higher approval rating than Mark Kelly. This reality defies the public messaging we are getting from the national press. Digest what this means. The media are upset at a Senator who is actually representing her state and its voters. This explains so much.
Sinema Has Another Demand and It Just
May Bury 'Build Back Better'
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) has actually been very clear and consistent when it comes to her demands.
According to the Daily Mail, she just laid down one of her major demands before she’ll even consider a vote on the Build Back Better bill. She wants the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed first. She’s made that plain, but they just haven’t been listening. She’s said in the past that she believes it should have been voted on separately and shouldn’t have been hooked to the Build Back Better (BBB) reconciliation bill by the progressives. She’s also chastised Democratic leaders for going back on their promises to move the infrastructure bill forward.
Meanwhile, the progressives are still refusing to vote on the infrastructure bill until there’s a vote on the BBB bill.
So it’s pretty clear that whatever movement that they thought they may have made in regard to coming off the $3.5 trillion number, you still have the basic, stalemate problem in place.
In a virtual meeting, both Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said they would not stand for any more deadlines made to force votes on the package. Both also have a big issue with the huge price tag of the BBB bill. But, there’s also a problem for Biden and the bill pushers, in that while Sinema and Manchin both are objecting, they don’t have exactly the same concerns.
‘Manchin and Sinema want very different things, both in terms of revenue and programs,’ a souce [sic] close to Biden told Playbook. ‘If you just look at their currently presented red lines you wouldn’t have enough left to get this past progressives in the House and Senate. It wouldn’t raise enough money and it wouldn’t do enough big programs.’
While Manchin has suggested he would be amenable to some taxes, as we reported earlier on Thursday, Sinema is balking at that, too.
A major holdup in the ongoing talks is Sinema’s opposition to any tax increases for individuals and large corporations, per two Senate Democratic aides familiar with the matter. Her position threatens to deprive the package of over $700 billion in revenue to finance the bulk of Biden’s agenda. The president has repeatedly promised his plan will be fully paid for and won’t add to the deficit. Most Democrats are also fervent in their desire to roll back President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.
I’m not really sure how the Democrats get past this basic stalemate. It really isn’t about the money alone at this point. Sinema has made it clear she doesn’t want to be held up by leadership bending to the progressives. So, now she’s locking in on it, and she’s just going to stand tougher. Moreover, if Sinema doesn’t want any taxes raised at all, then you might as well pack it up and bury the Build Back Better bill — because it’s not happening.
Meanwhile, Sinema is in Europe and hasn’t released her schedule of where she is there and when she’s coming back. That’s going to make it hard for any activists to find her and harass her there. So, all the left can do is gnash their teeth from afar about her trip — while she gets the last laugh.
Bernie Bros Threaten More Harassment of Sinema but She May Have the Best Response
Radical leftists are not done with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) just yet, they said.
Our Revolution Executive Director Joseph Geevarghese said that they were committed to harassing her and he threatened that they were going to “make her life unpleasant.”
“We’re committed to birddogging Kyrsten Sinema with her constituents until the very end,” Our Revolution Executive Director Joseph Geevarghese said in an interview. “What we want to show is that her constituents are very serious about wanting policies and activism and we’re going to make her life unpleasant or uncomfortable until that happens.”
Our Revolution is the Bernie Sanders radical group that gets involved in a lot of leftist direct actions. Leftist groups have been “birddogging” Sinema over not going along with Joe Biden’s massive spending spree — the Build Back Better bill. Sanders himself refused to condemn the harassment of Sinema after activists even followed her and filmed while she was in the bathroom, unless the statement also included criticism of Sinema’s failure to be in favor of the bill.
Activists then harassed her at the airport, then one of them even bought a ticket so they could bother her on the plane as well. They subsequently even harangued her on the street in D.C. then followed her to the Boston Marathon.
This is just stalking and a flat-out effort at intimidation.
As Sinema has said, she’s made her position very clear, whether Joe Biden and these radical crazies like it or not.
“I have already told the White House what I am willing to do and what I’m not willing to do,” Sinema said. “I’m not mysterious. It’s not that I can’t make up my mind. I communicated it to them in detail. They just don’t like what they’re hearing.”
That’s it. It’s the same with the activists too. They claim she isn’t listening to them. But indeed, it’s they who haven’t heard her. She’s said that she previously met with LUCHA, the activist group whose members followed her into the bathroom. They just don’t like what she has to say.
The bottom line is they’re just hoping they can force her to change her mind with these tactics. And beyond that, if they don’t, they just want to make her hurt for refusing to agree with them. That’s pretty evil. But they’re not just wrong from a moral point of view (and maybe a legal point of view, since as I pointed out, filming her in the bathroom and trespassing may have tripped over into the category of a crime), but they’re also wrong from a political point of view as well. Why would all this move her? At this point, in fact, one has to think it would just harden her position all the more, and rightly so. Who would go along with anyone who acted this way? Who believes in intimidation as a political tactic?
Sinema has bashed these kinds of tactics.
“Yesterday’s behavior was not [a] legitimate protest. It is unacceptable for activist organizations to instruct their members to jeopardize themselves by engaging in unlawful activities such as gaining entry to closed university buildings, disrupting learning environments, and filming students in a restroom,” she said.
But she may have the best response now that Congress is on break. They’re going to have to spend some money to follow her now because she went to Europe and she didn’t tell them her itinerary, so they’re going to have to go some to try to figure it out.
Ms. Sinema’s office declined to say how long she would be abroad, what countries she was visiting, how the trip was being paid for and whether she was doing any additional fund-raising for her own campaign. Her political team had reached out to set up meetings in London and Paris, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Good luck, stalkers, you’re going to have a hard time now.