Filibuster holdout: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's biggest bipartisanship test is yet to come

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Kyrsten Sinema’s commitment to centrist and bipartisan governance is getting its first real tests. So far, she is mostly passing. But the most severe test is yet to come.

Sinema has forged a remarkable political career in Arizona, largely by eschewing partisan politics. She became a player in the Arizona Legislature, won and held handily a swing congressional district, and then became the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate seat in three decades. Although the word “Democrat” always seemed to be missing from her campaign materials.

Sinema was radical left very early in her political career, the unsuccessful phase of it. Republicans have long maintained that her centrist, bipartisan makeover was phony. That she was still a radical at heart. In fact, in election after election, they have run tired and tiresome, and utterly futile, campaigns making that claim.

Sinema takes the filibuster heat 

There was something else that stood out about Sinema’s political career. Until this year, she has always served in the minority.

It’s easy to create the image of being centrist and bipartisan while in the minority and your vote doesn’t really make a difference. Not so easy when in the majority, and particularly in a majority with no votes to spare.

At this point, it’s hard to credit GOP claims that Sinema’s commitment to centrist, bipartisan governance is phony, given the political price she is paying for sticking with her support for the virtual filibuster.

Now, I think Sinema is wrong that the filibuster fosters bipartisanship. However, she makes the same argument in favor of that proposition that previous Arizona Sens. John McCain, Jon Kyl and Jeff Flake have made. There’s every reason to believe that all of them have been sincere in that belief. And all of them have actually served in the body, rather than observing it as an armchair scribbler.

If this is all about political calculation, Sinema didn’t need to absorb the heat and pressure about the filibuster. She’s not up for election until 2024.

Filibuster reform: Do we really need a second House of Representatives?

There’s a dodge available for her, one that Joe Biden and Joe Manchin have mulled, and that her seatmate Mark Kelly appears to be laying the groundwork for. And that is not to abolish the filibuster, but “reform” it by requiring a real, talking filibuster.

A talking filibuster wouldn’t effectively establish a 60-vote rule for passing legislation as the virtual filibuster does. And it is the 60-vote requirement that Sinema has vigorously defended, even in the context of federal voting standards Democrats passionately want to see passed, and which Sinema strongly supports.

In addition to taking unnecessary heat over the filibuster, Sinema is hard at work at actually trying to forge and pass bipartisan legislation, including on some big and difficult topics.

She is a principal negotiator in the bipartisan group that came up with an infrastructure package endorsed by President Joe Biden, and that may be on its way to success. She is also part of a bipartisan group working on incremental immigration reform. The surge of asylum processing resources at the border that she has proposed with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, is a key component of that discussion. 

At this point, the sincerity of Sinema’s commitment to centrist, bipartisanship governance should be acknowledged. Still, the most severe test of Sinema’s commitment, however sincere, will be what Democrats want to do with budget reconciliation.

Will Sinema derail $6 trillion monster?

Reconciliation is an artifact from the Budget Act of 1974, which was intended to create deadlines for the orderly adoption of a federal budget. Democrats, as Republicans before them, are ignoring everything about the Budget Act and its deadlines, except the ability to enact things through a supposed reconciliation bill that avoids the filibuster.

That was the way Democrats jammed through the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, Biden’s COVID-19 response proposal, on a straight party-line vote in the Senate. Sinema voted for it, even though some Republicans were willing to negotiate on a smaller number.

Bernie Sanders, the improbable chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are working on the mother of all reconciliation bills, a $6 trillion fiscal monster that will include everything Biden has proposed and add items of the Sanders agenda he hasn’t yet endorsed.

Strengthen bipartisanship: Don't end the filibuster, make it stronger

Schumer wants a two-step process: Pass an infrastructure bill Republicans will support. Then do everything else on a straight party-line vote through reconciliation, which requires only 51 votes.

That’s not centrist, bipartisan governance. And it’s likely to sour the hopeful bipartisan efforts underway. Republicans aren’t going to want to forge bipartisan deals, only to be run over by a reconciliation freight train.

If Sinema wants her centrist, bipartisan approach to have a chance of proving itself, the reconciliation freight train needs to be derailed.

And she has the power to derail it.  

Robert Robb is a columnist for The Arizona Republic, where this piece first appeared. Follow him on Twitter: @RJRobb