Kyrsten Sinema reportedly has told lobbyists that she's opposed to any increase in taxes on high-income individuals, businesses, or capital gains. If true, that would likely be a death blow to President Biden’s social agenda. jonathanchait writes
News reports this week have portrayed Democrats in Congress as slowly converging on a deal to pass a shrunken version of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. But the main centrist protagonist in those stories is Senator Joe Manchin, the crusty dealmaker who has long been identified as the Democratic party’s 50th and most pivotal vote. There has been scant reporting on Senator Kyrsten Sinema.
If this report is true, it would likely be a death blow to Biden’s social agenda. Senate rules require that creating or expanding any social program — health care, child care, education, or anything else — can only be made permanent if it has some funding source. If Sinema refuses to support any tax increases on the wealthy, there’s no financing available to come anywhere close.
Politico has a more restrained version of the same report on Sinema’s position, leaving open the possibility of theoretically finding some way of taxing rich people other than the ones Democrats have been planning on. But even if she identifies such a method, it would start the arduous process of building consensus and then overcoming the inevitable lobbying response from scratch, probably dooming the entire process.
The Democratic party’s main political asset is its willingness to make a very tiny number of people pay more money that can finance programs that benefit a very large number of people. That only works up to a point — at some level, you can raise taxes on the rich so high it fails to yield any new revenue — but there is no evidence the current tax code is anywhere near that level. Indeed, after the Trump tax cuts, the tax code for the wealthy has become scandalously lax.
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