Amid rumblings that the White House might renew talks with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) over President Joe Biden’s sweeping Build Back Better (BBB) plan several months after the senator tanked the legislation, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) is proud to announce that she’ll be staying true to herself as a major obstacle in the negotiations if they do get resurrected.
During a luncheon hosted by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry at Arizona Biltmore, a luxury resort in Phoenix, Sinema promised business lobbyists that they can still count on her to try to gut BBB like she did before.
“What I can’t tell you is if negotiations will start again or what they’ll look like,” the senator said, per the Arizona Republic. “But what I can promise you is that I’ll be the same person in negotiations if they start again that I was in negotiations last year.”
Sinema reassured the lobbyists that they have nothing to fear as far as a corporate minimum tax rate in BBB goes; she’s still opposed to it and any other tax policies that “would put a brake on any type of economic growth or forestall business and personal growth for America’s industries.”
Though it was ultimately Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) who blew up the BBB negotiations with the White House in December, Sinema had similarly stonewalled the legislation with her opposition to raising corporate taxes — both Democratic senators handed the GOP a massive gift.
Now Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is scrambling to ensure Manchin stays the course.
“There’s some indication that Sen. Manchin may be flirting with another version of it. I hope not,” McConnell said during an event in Kentucky on Tuesday, according to NBC News. “We’re doing everything to discourage him from that.”
