Emulate McCain, kill the reconciliation bill
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., has called the late Sen. John McCain, RAriz., her “personal hero” and has taken up his mantle as the “maverick” of the Senate — unafraid to buck her own party or insist on bipartisan cooperation.
Well, if she wants to be a true maverick, she should follow McCain’s example and kill the budget reconciliation bill.
Four years ago, McCain delivered the vote that helped stop GOP efforts to repeal Obamacare using the same party-line budget reconciliation process Democrats are now using to pass President Joe Biden’s massive social spending plan. In doing so, McCain criticized Republicans for trying to pass legislation “from the top down, without any support from the other side.” He praised the Senate’s “arcane rules and customs” that were “deliberately intended to require broad cooperation” and “compromise in order to make incremental progress on solving America’s problems.”
“Why don’t we try the old way of legislating in the Senate?” he asked. “Bring to the floor for amendment and debate, and see if we can pass something that will be imperfect, full of compromises, and not very pleasing to implacable partisans on either side.”
Sinema should be asking the very same questions when it comes to the Democrats’ massive reconciliation
bill. Like McCain, she has allowed the process to play out. But she also made clear she “would not be able to support a bill that cost $3.5 trillion.”
That is exactly what the bill’s programs will cost. Democrats claim to have lowered the cost of the bill from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion over 10 years. In truth, they did not scale back their bill to cuts its costs. Instead, they hid the real cost by using early “sunset” expiration dates for the social spending programs in the bill — knowing full well that once an entitlement is created, it is almost never allowed to expire.
At the request of Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the Congressional Budget Office scored the 10year cost of 18 proposals in the bill.
Add it all up, and the cost of the 18 programs analyzed by CBO is $3.47 trillion over 10 years — almost exactly the amount
Sinema said she would never support. And while Biden has insisted the cost of the bill is $0, CBO reports that if the provisions were extended over 10 years, it would increase the deficit by $3 trillion.
Why would Sinema go along with such a charade? She owes nothing to the progressive wing of her party. With Biden’s blessing, they took her bipartisan infrastructure bill hostage to force House moderates to vote for his massive reconciliation bill. When the infrastructure bill finally passed in November, it was only because 13 House Republicans crossed the aisle to save it. If progressives had their way, they would have killed Sinema’s signature legislation.
So why not return the favor? The damage on the left is done. A recent poll found that 70% of likely Democratic primary voters in Arizona disapprove of Sinema. But Arizona has an open primary system. Sinema can win with the support of independents and conservatives. If she votes for the reconciliation bill, she alienates them as well. Then she has angered everyone.
In recent interview with a local radio station, Sinema said, “In Arizona, we value fiscal responsibility.” This bill is anything but fiscally responsible. So do the right thing, senator. If you want to be the maverick, you need to kill the bill.