Current Events > Sinema and Manchin Still Up to Their Old Tricks

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/02/sinema-manchin-senate-debt-limit-vote-00099840

"Last term, the two centrist senators publicly shaped nearly every piece of major legislation. They revived the act on the debt limit but this time, they stayed behind the scenes. Many people in Washington were surprised when Mays debt ceiling negotiations quickly narrowed down to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, his lieutenants and top White House aides. Not Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.). In fact, it was sort of her idea.

I did suggest to the White House that meetings would be more productive if the people who actually had the authority to make a deal and deliver the votes were the only ones in the room, Sinema recalled in an interview.

Senators typically loathe the sort of top-down negotiations that produced the deal to lift the debt ceiling through 2024, preferring to use the chambers notorious bipartisan gangs that give them more direct input. And this time around only a handful of rank-and-file lawmakers were able to directly influence the process, most distinctly Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

The deal was pretty much exactly where the two senators hoped everything would end up alienating only the far right and left and empowering the center. Its a wonderful deal when you have the extremes back in the minority, Manchin said. The two centrist senators barely entered the public debt narrative other than pressing for negotiations. Yet each played an integral role in jump-starting discussions and assembling the particulars of the deal, particularly the legislations work requirement, spending and energy provisions.

Sinema leaned on years of relationships with McCarthy and lead negotiators Reps. Garret Graves (R-La.) and Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) while also consulting closely with OMB Director Shalanda Young and White House counselor Steve Ricchetti, who led the White House strategy alongside Legislative Director Louisa Terrell. She spent Thursday racing around the Capitol, aiding Senate leaders as they sought an agreement to speed votes up, spending literally hours helping craft joint statements and locking in amendment votes."

God I hate these two.

This is why the House and President always take the political theater down to the last possible moment - to back the Senate up against a wall.

Thankfully both are donezo after 2024 lol