Arizona Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema had a busy Tuesday. She met with Joe Biden to discuss her ongoing issues with his social safety net and climate policy bill, a discussion White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki labeled “constructive.” Later, she was scheduled to hold a high-priced fundraiser hosted by five business groups opposed to the White House’s plan to fund its ambitious agenda with corporate tax increases.
“Please join ROOFPAC, S-Corp PAC, NECA PAC, NAW-PAC, NGA Grocers PAC for an event honoring Senator Kyrsten Sinema,” reads the fundraiser invitation obtained by The New York Times, which prominently features Sinema’s campaign logo. The invite, according to the Times, asked attendees to write checks for Sinema’s campaign ranging from $1,000 and $5,800. Among the groups attending the Sinema campaign event include the Republican-leaning National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, which condemned Biden’s spending package. “Passing the largest tax increase in U.S. history on the backs of America’s job creators as they recover from a global pandemic is the last thing Washington should be doing,” wrote the NAW. “The Democrats’ nearly $3 trillion tax hike proposal is so massive and harmful that even if the Democrats were to ultimately cut it down, it would still destroy millions of Americans jobs and businesses.”
Sinema, along with conservative Democrat Joe Manchin—who also met with Biden on Tuesday—have been the biggest obstacles to their party’s $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package reaching Biden’s desk. (The pair’s opposition to breaking the Senate filibuster has also held up Democratic priorities like protecting voting rights.) The decades-long spending plan is set to fund Biden’s flagship domestic policies, including expanding health care, childcare, and education; reducing the effects of climate change; and addressing America’s infrastructure issues. The bill’s price tag is Sinema’s main issue with the bill, as a spokesperson for the senator said in August that “she will not support a budget reconciliation bill that costs $3.5 trillion.” Sinema’s office declined to comment to the Times on the fundraiser, though said the senator was “working directly, in good faith, on the legislation with her colleagues and the administration.”
The Arizona Democrat has faced backlash at home and among progressives for her moves against Biden’s domestic agenda. Faiz Shakir, an adviser to Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders, tweeted that Sinema “gives corporate influences great access” and questioned “how much time in her schedule has Sen. Sinema reserved for open, public meetings with her constituents?” Sawyer Hackett, the executive director of former HUD Secretary Julián Castro’s People First Future, responded to Sinema’s fundraising event by accusing the senator of “using the reconciliation fight to collect $5,800 checks from corporate PACs opposing the bill? Each of these PACs overwhelmingly support Republicans over Democrats.” And as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said on Monday night’s show in response to the Times fundraiser scoop: “This is the overlap in the Venn diagram between ‘Oh, that explains everything’ and ‘Wow, tone-deaf much.’”
However, Sinema has gained a new faction of supporters on the right in light of her clash with the White House. On Monday, Fox Business host Larry Kudlow praised Sinema for opposing Biden’s corporate tax hikes. “Now, that is my kind of gal,” said Kudlow, who served as Trump’s top economic adviser. “I don’t know what the Democratic leaders think they’re going to do with her…. Now that’s like the old Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy or even Bill Clinton’s second term, completely different than today’s woked-up class warfare, ‘I hate business and investment,’ big government socialist Dems.” Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade also gave Sinema props for standing in the way of Biden’s “socialist agenda” and claiming that she is being harassed for it. “If you don’t get your way, if you don’t vote their way, they will harass you now,” he said.
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