Wheels on the Omnibus Go Round and Round
It was after their own self-imposed deadline, and it was six months later than the start of the fiscal year, but in the early morning hours of Saturday, the U.S. Senate voted to concur with the U.S. House and pass $1.2 trillion on spending for a portion of the federal government, for the rest of the fiscal year that ends September 30.
If you think anyone learned any lessons about “good government” as result of all this, you’d be wrong. There is nothing in the DNA of this Congress to suggest a budget will be passed as it is supposed to be done in time for the next fiscal year…meaning literally one month before the election, the government will be in turmoil or living under kick-the-can-down-the-road stopgap measures.
The spin from Republicans is that they improved upon the past massive spending bills by having the required dozen separate funding bills move to the floor; in the past, there would be one massive omnibus where time crunches forced a single up or down vote on everything. Don’t let them get away with that spin…because first, instead of one massive bill, there were two bills—each apparently “half massive”. That’s because instead of actually voting on one of the spending bills at a time, giving each the attention and scrutiny it deserves, they lumped multiple bills together into one…this one that just passed was more than a thousand pages in length, handed to members overnight going into Thursday morning, with a Friday night deadline. So on top of the wrong nature of the so-called “minibus”…the House also waived its own 72-hour rule designed to provide transparency.
This is the uniparty swamp at work. We can talk about thin majorities, we can talk about the need to govern, we can talk about how there’s more good in the mess than bad—but it’s still not what was promised, it’s not what is expected, and it’s not what voters deserve.
Well, unless voters simply return these same folks to Congress each election cycle without demanding accountability; then voters will get exactly what they deserve.
