Kyrsten Sinema Quotes

It would have been easier if Biden were dealing with just Manchin, but he wasn’t. He needed to bring Kyrsten Sinema along, and dealing with both of them was a maddening exercise. It was as if they were strategically out of sync. They kept pushing in opposite directions. Sinema didn’t want to raise taxes but was less skittish about spending money; Manchin was happy to raise taxes but didn’t want to spend too much. Pleasing one of the holdouts made it harder to cut a deal with the other. On September 22, Biden decided to confront the problem head on. Rather than conduct separate negotiations with Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and six centrist House Democrats, he pulled them together for a meeting in the Oval Office. When senators entered the Oval Office to negotiate with Biden, they were surprised by his collegiality. He treated them as his equal. It was as if he were still Joe Biden (D-Del.), a legislative dealmaker, not a president imposing his will on them. Meetings with legislators were sometimes scheduled for two-and-a-half-hour blocks. And they were endless. Sinema came to the White House ten times over the summer and early fall. He was solicitous and patient, trying to edge them to consensus, for the most part. But Biden

Secrecy, however, came at a cost. Every Democratic senator greeted the announcement with euphoria, except for one. Kyrsten Sinema learned about the agreement on the floor of the Senate, when Republican senator John Thune mentioned it to her. And she instantly unleashed her fury on Schumer. In fairness, Joe Manchin knew that the legislation would needle her. Over the past year, the pair struggled to suppress their rivalry. They both enjoyed being the fiftieth senator, the vote on which their party’s agenda depended. It was the point of maximum leverage—and it came with the plaudits of tycoons, who cheered them for spoiling the Democratic agenda. Despite