Kyrsten Sinema Is Threatening to Derail Democrats’ Agenda. Again.

She campaigned on lowering drug costs. Now she’s poised to blow up a spending bill that would do just that.

Kyrsten Sinema

Michael Brochstein/Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

It’s happening again. On Sunday, Politico reported that Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is opposed to her colleagues’ plan to regulate the price of prescription drugs—and voiced her disagreement at a recent meeting at the White House with President Joe Biden. 

Democrats have little margin for error on virtually anything that passes through the Senate, which makes Sinema’s stance a difficult one for the party. The plan to reduce drug costs by allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies was supposed to be a key part of the major Biden-backed spending bill—essentially an omnibus of the president’s major domestic policy priorities, from climate action to immigration—currently making its way through Congress. The drug plan would save the government a ton of money—helping to cover the costs of the rests of the bill—but more significantly, it’s an enormously popular idea that would make a lot of people’s lives better.

For all of those reasons, lowering the cost of prescription drugs has been a core Democratic priority (at least on paper) for years. Even Donald Trump recognized the value of at least saying he supported lowering drug prices, though he did not particularly care whether it actually happened. Democratic opponents of the plan have tried to cast themselves as moderates—problem-solvers just searching for a pragmatic middle ground. But in drawing the line on drug-pricing, they’re revealing themselves to be the caucus’ true radicals.

Sinema is not alone in opposing her party’s prescription-drug push. Last week, a small group of House Democrats—all of whom had previously voted for the exact same proposal—announced their opposition, stating variously that reducing pharmaceutical company profits would curb innovation, and that, In These Uncertain Times, Congress should strive to pass measures that are bipartisan. Those members proposed an alternative measure, which would only curb the prices of certain drugs that have already been on the market for a while. It was the sort of token plan you offer so that no one can accuse you of not having one. Sinema, as Politico notes, doesn’t support that plan either.

Lowering drug costs is such a popular idea, though, that opposing it actually puts these members far out on the political fringe. According to a recent Kaiser poll, 88 percent of Americans support it. It is pretty hard to find an idea that’s as popular in American politics. (Apple pie clocks in at just 81 percent.) Lowering drug costs should be a “moderate” sweet-spot—a reform that delivers tangible benefits to an engaged political constituency (old people, mostly) without blowing up existing systems, all while bolstering your talking points about thriftiness. Lots of Democrats in tough districts are dying to put this issue in their mailers next year; lots of Democrats in tough districts won those races while campaigning on exactly this. 

But there is one constituency that very much backs these holdouts—the pharmaceutical industry, which is already running ads in Sinema’s defense and has given her nearly $400,000 since 2017, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Rep. Scott Peters, a California Democrat who has come out against the measure, has received more money from pharma this cycle than any other member of the House. For another holdout, Rep. Kurt Schrader of Oregon, Pfizer is not just one of his largest contributors, it is also the source of his family’s fortune. Rep. Kathleen Rice, the other holdout, has received far less money from Big Pharma, yet still seems more than happy undercutting her old campaign ads: 

Sinema is also engaged in a sort of a staring contest with other members of her party over the infrastructure bill she helped broker an agreement on, which is supposed to come up for a vote in the House next week. She has threatened to block a vote on the big reconciliation package (of which drug-negotiation is a part) if that infrastructure bill doesn’t pass the House, while House progressives are threatening to block the infrastructure bill if she won’t back the larger domestic priorities bill. So any stray commentary on what she will or won’t support has to be read through the lens of this weird and ongoing Capitol Hill power play.

In this case, Sinema’s office has said it won’t comment on individual pieces of the budget bill. But the clash over drug prices is clarifying. There’s a traditional tendency by people like her to present their opposition as some sort of savvy and practical number-crunching—a sober rejoinder to those progressives always asking for more money. A recent Axios story reported that Sinema had started making her own spreadsheets to help her find flaws in the multi-trillion-dollar budget bill the drug-pricing scheme was supposed to be a part of. Someone looking for savings wouldn’t take the hatchet to the item that’s going to produce lots of savings, and someone thinking of the political middle wouldn’t chop away at the thing that the political middle loves.

Sinema understands the appeal of the bill as well as anyone. Just take a look at her campaign messaging:

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate