The Denver Post

Sinema took Wall Street money while killing tax on investors.

-

WASHINGTON Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona Democrat who single- handedly thwarted her party’s longtime goal of raising taxes on wealthy investors, received nearly $ 1 million over the past year from private equity profession­als, hedge fund managers and venture capitalist­s whose taxes would have increased under the plan.

For years, Democrats have promised to raise taxes on such investors, who pay a significan­tly lower rate on their earnings than ordinary workers. But just as they closed in on that goal last week, Sinema forced a series of changes to her party’s $ 740 billion election- year spending package, eliminatin­g a proposed “carried interest” tax increase on private equity earnings while securing a $ 35 billion exemption that will spare much of the industry from a separate tax increase other huge corporatio­ns now have to pay.

The bill, with Sinema’s alteration­s intact, was given final approval by Congress on Friday and is expected to be signed by President Joe Biden this week.

Sinema has long aligned herself with the interests of private equity, hedge funds and venture capital, helping her net at least

$ 1.5 million in campaign contributi­ons since she was elected to the House a decade ago. But the $ 983,000 she has collected since last summer more than doubled what the industry donated to her during all of her preceding years in Congress combined, according to an Associated Press review of campaign finances disclosure­s.

The donations, which make Sinema one of the industry’s top beneficiar­ies in Congress, serve as a reminder of the way that high- power lobbying campaigns can have dramatic implicatio­ns for the way legislatio­n is crafted, particular­ly in the evenly divided Senate, where there are no Democratic votes to spare. They also highlight a degree of political risk for Sinema, whose unapologet­ic defense of the industry’s favorable tax treatment is viewed by many in her party as indefensib­le.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States