WASHINGTON — In the middle of one of the Senate’s longest and most consequential weekends of 2022, a photograph captured Senator Bernie Sanders in an unusually quiet moment.

The Vermont independent was sitting alone on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, his shoulders slightly hunched as lawmakers inside continued a marathon series of votes on the Inflation Reduction Act.

There was no podium in front of him, no crowd surrounding him and no campaign rally underway.

Just Sanders, sitting by himself outside the building where, only hours earlier, one of his proposals had suffered an extraordinary 99–1 defeat.

The photograph, taken on August 7, 2022, by Los Angeles Times photographer Kent Nishimura, quickly attracted attention online. It showed Sanders resting in the shade as the Senate moved through its lengthy “vote-a-rama” over the legislation.

Behind the image was a complicated legislative battle over prescription drug prices.

Sanders had introduced Amendment No. 5210 during consideration of the Inflation Reduction Act. His proposal sought to establish a cap on what Medicare would pay for prescription drugs by tying Medicare prices to those paid by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Sanders argued that because the VA negotiated substantially lower prices, applying similar pricing to Medicare could dramatically reduce federal spending on prescription medications.

“The VA has been negotiating drug prices for 30 years and pays half — half — as much as Medicare pays,” Sanders told the Senate while presenting the amendment.

His proposal, he said, would prevent Medicare from paying more than the VA and could therefore cut the cost of Medicare prescription drugs roughly in half. Sanders estimated that the change could save Medicare about $900 billion over a decade.

But the amendment ran into Senate budget rules.

The vote recorded as 99–1 was technically not a direct vote on whether senators supported lower drug prices. Instead, senators were voting on whether to waive applicable budgetary rules so Sanders’ amendment could proceed.

Sixty votes were required.

Sanders received one.

The motion failed 99–1, and the amendment consequently fell.

The lopsided result was partly a reflection of the delicate political circumstances surrounding the Inflation Reduction Act.

Democratic leaders were working with an exceptionally narrow Senate majority and attempting to preserve an agreement that had taken months of negotiations to assemble. Some Democratic senators who supported broader health-care policies nevertheless voted against Sanders’ amendments during the process because they did not want to disrupt the carefully negotiated package. Contemporary reporting described senators expressing frustration that additional amendments could threaten the overall legislation.

Sanders was also offering several proposals he believed would strengthen the bill.

Among them were measures involving Medicare benefits, prescription drugs, the child tax credit, climate policy and corporate taxation. Several were defeated by overwhelming margins during the marathon voting session.

Despite those defeats, Sanders ultimately voted for the Inflation Reduction Act.

He described the legislation as insufficient compared with what he believed Congress should accomplish, but also acknowledged provisions dealing with climate change and prescription drug costs as meaningful progress. The Senate eventually passed the bill, and President Joe Biden signed it into law on August 16, 2022.

That broader political story is what made the photograph on the Capitol steps so striking.

A senator who had spent decades arguing for changes to the American health-care system was momentarily separated from the speeches, roll calls and procedural maneuvering taking place inside.

For supporters of Sanders, the image came to symbolize persistence in the face of political isolation. Others saw something more ordinary: an exhausted senator taking a break during an exceptionally long legislative session.

Either interpretation gives the photograph more meaning than the image alone can establish.

What the record clearly shows is that Sanders had just experienced one of the most lopsided procedural defeats possible in the United States Senate.

Ninety-nine senators voted against waiving the budget rules.

One voted for it.

Bernie Sanders.

And hours later, while the machinery of the Senate continued moving inside the Capitol, he was photographed sitting quietly on its steps.