For Immediate Release
Thursday, August 4, 2022
Patriotic Millionaires on Sinema: SOLD to Private Equity Billionaires
“Kyrsten Sinema has spent her entire Senate term posturing for a multimillion dollar job in private equity. Now she’s looking to close the deal.”
Washington, DC – As Democrats finalize details of the Inflation Reduction Act, reports indicate that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is demanding Democrats strip the bill of language that would rein in the carried interest loophole – the so-called “Billionaires Loophole” – which mischaracterizes the ordinary income of private equity fund managers as capital gains income cutting their tax bill in half. The loophole is estimated to benefit around 5,000 of the richest people in the entire country.
In response, Erica Payne, founder and President of the Patriotic Millionaires, released the following statement:
“Kyrsten Sinema has spent her entire Senate term posturing for a multimillion dollar job in private equity. Now she’s looking to close the deal.
When Sinema loses her primary and her Senate seat (if she even bothers to run at all) her private equity billionaire backers will give her not a golden parachute, but a diamond-studded, ruby-encrusted platinum one.
Because of her – and her alone – billionaire fund managers will keep “getting away with murder,” and Kyrsten Sinema will be their (very well-paid) hitman.”
At this point, it’s clear that Sinema never intended to serve the people of Arizona, but instead to use her Senate seat as a springboard into the elite class. Her vote to save the single most intellectually-indefensible, morally-unforgivable, economically-inexcusable loophole in the entire tax code is the cost of entry.”
The Patriotic Millionaires have targeted Sinema over the past year for her singular obstruction of Democrats’ attempts to close the carried interest loophole. In December 2021 the group took out full-page ads in local Arizona newspapers, protested outside Sinema’s district office, and paraded a mobile billboard outside Sinema’s Phoenix office, Grand Canyon University, the Arizona State Capitol, and Cronkite School of Journalism. The billboard featured THIS image, a challenge in response to Senator Sinema’s “internship” at a winery owned by private equity billionaire Bill Price.
The Patriotic Millionaires have spent the last decade fighting to close the carried interest loophole, the “poster child” of the corrupting influence of money in politics. From activism at the state level to lobbying Congress directly, the organization is one of the nation’s leading voices in the fight to make wealthy fund managers pay income taxes just like everyday Americans.
For additional information or interview requests, please contact Sam Quigley at sam@patrioticmillionaires.org.